Kathy Gibson at Huawei Connect in Shanghai – The intelligent world is here, with the cloud driving procurement of IT services and technologies.
In the near future, there will be five clouds around the world, says Guo Ping, deputy chairman and rotating CEO of Huawei
Huawei intends to be involved in the creation of these five global clouds, working with partners like Deutsche Telekom Orange and Telefonica.
“Huawei has made strategic investments in cloud and has been building the cloud for a long time,” says Ping.
“We have been working to build a public cloud in China for some time, and are working with trusted partnered internationally to build partnership clouds.
“We expect to build cloud alliances around the world.”
The business model is to make money from technologies and services rather than from customer data, Ping stresses. “This is a major difference we will work with customers to help them monetise their own data; and work with partners to help them leverage technology to build their success.
“I commit again: Huawei Cloud does not monetise data, and does not coerce customers to hare data with Huawei.”
Technology underpins all aspects of cloud, and Huawei is able to cover all the technology areas, Ping says.
“Around half the world population uses Huawei network equipment.” He says. “We lead the industry in SingleRAN, all-optical networking and data centre switching.
“Now, cloud is the next big thing and we are making big investments to build these technologies.”
Security is still the top concern for customers. To tackle this challenge, technology and processes need to be addresses. So physical, network, host, application and data security need to be built into technology, while security has to be embedded into all processes.
“Huawei dedicated 5% of all R&D investment in security,” Ping says.
To build a global cloud, it is necessary to hav a global services team, As a big company, Huawei understands the needs of global enterprises and has teams on the ground in most geographies, Ping says.
Sharing is an important part of building a public cloud, so Huawei focuses on providing a technology platform that partners can then use to build intelligent systems and services.
“In this ecosystem, Huawei sets its sights on 1% of the pie,” Ping says.
Partners include companies like SenseTime, IBM, Hexagon, NEC, Dassault, Honeywell, Microsoft, Yitu and Johnson Controls.
Huawei is committed to build a hybrid cloud that meets the needs of governments and enterprise, Ping says.
“Customers choose this model because of the general perception of cloud, as well as their own business needs.”
This means organisations can integrate their own systems, private clouds and public clouds , and design industry-specific solutions.
Multiple connections are now needed for the cloud. Various connectivity technologies are used, awhile devices range from phones and tables to machines, plant, cars and utilities.
Meanwhile, different industries have different needs, so specific solutions must be developed for industry sectors.
“In building an ecosystem, Huawei leverages its global footprint,” Ping says.
There are now 20 OpenLabs around the world, where Huawei partners with more than 200 industry leaders in developing solutions.
In Weifang, smart city applications go as far as connecting manhole covers, so relevant authorities can be notified if they are swept away in storms.
But smart city can bring more than convenience to cities it can increase revenue and profitability too.
Yanbu has built a smart city and has seen an increase in investment of 18%, resulting in the creation of 18 000 new jobs.