Kathy Gibson reports from Huawei Eco-Connect 2023 – Industry digitalisation is critical for Africa, promising to help the continent leapfrog other regions to achieve its potential.
Leo Chen, president of Huawei sub-Saharan Africa region, points out that the African Union, along with major African countries, have developed digital strategies to assist in the six-fold growth that African economies can expect by 2050.
Addressing the Huawei Eco-Connect Sub-Saharan Africa 2023 conference, Chen highlights the growth on the renewabale energy generation market and investment in public cloud, which is projected to grow by more than 19% by 2027. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence (AI) spending in African and the Middle East will reach $6,4-billion by 2026.
However, Chen warns that there are several challenges that need to be overcome if African countries are to achieve digitalisation:
* Industry transformation – different scenarios require different solutions;
* Intelligence – the current capability is inadequate, and the number of data centres insufficient;
* Infrastructure – today there is weak connection and coverage;
* Green energy – African countries still experience a power supply deficit while there is a focus on decarbonisation; and
* Digital talent – there is a skills shortage that limits the continent’s ability to realise its full digital potential.
“As a leading company, operating in Africa for 20 years, Huawei is committed to tackling these challenges with its partners,” Chen says.
To this end, Huawei has developed a comprehensive set of technology solutions that can apply the right technology for each industry scenario and enable digital transformation across the continent.
Africa’s digital transformation vision cannot be realised without a pool of skilled resources. To date, Huawei has trained 100 000 people in digital technology through its LEAP programme using its four national training centres and more than 400 ICT academies. And it plans to train the same number again over the next few years.
The company has also empowered more than 1 000 SMEs, investing R100-million in them through the Spark program.
Recognising the enormous growth in the power market, Huawei plans to train more than 1 000 energy partners, offering hands-on operations, on-site practice, and a training camp.
Chen stresses that partnering is key to Huawei’s success in Africa and the company commits to joint growth with its network of partners.
Innovation in networking
The economic challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic have done little to dampen enthusiasm for digital transformation.
Huawei has seen this in more than 1 000 new network customers in 2022 – more than 100 of them in Africa.
“Digital sovereignty is vital for all countries,” says Steven Zhao, vice-president of Huawei datacom product line. “And this has resulted in all industries accelerating their digital transformation.”
However, along with digital transformation are new challenges, Zhao points out.
“The solution to all the challenges can only be innovation. This has got to be the culture of the enterprise.”
Huawei lives this philosophy, he says: last year, 20% of the company’s revenue was invested in innovation. Huawei has 15 R&D centres worldwide and last year was granted 12 000 patents.
Huawei has recently launched new networking solutions in Africa.
The Office Campus provides a 10Gbps campus network for building ultra high-speed access. This solution offers five-times terminal access speed, lowers IoT investment by 30%, and allows 30% to 80% more devices to be connected, increasing production efficiency by 50%.
The new Production Campus offers a high-quality production network, with a 50% increase in production efficiency.
The recently-launched wide area network (WAN) is an IPv6 enhanced solution empowering industry digital transformation, offering fast cloud connection, security isolation, and high performance.
The Data Centre Network is a hyperconverged CloudFabric solution for the finance, public service and education markets.
Network Security is an intelligent protection solution consolidating ubiquitous trustworthiness. It offers campus-grade protection, branch cloud-edge security, and data centre ransomware protection.
Industry-specific solutions are key to Huawei’s new product line-up, so it is launching solutions designed specifically for education, healthcare, retail, hotel, and SME customers.
The education network offers a simplified architecture, with power-saving and noise free operation.
The retail branch network comes with simplified network and O&M (operations and management).
The hospital network features zero interruption and efficient routine check using zero-roaming distributed WiFi.
A new portfolio dedicated to SME customers taps into what Zhao dubs “six-easy”. For end users, they are easy to learn and easy to use; for distributors, they are easy to buy and easy to sell; and for engineering contractors they are easy to install and easy to maintain.
“These networking solutions are suitable for budget hotels, small retailers, commercial shops and home offices,” Zhao says.
Huawei today launched more than 18 new products in its multi-service gateway, switches, and WLAN portfolios.
For partners, the company provides multiple co-marketing tools including documentation materials, a marketing platform, talent training, joint marketing campaigns, and community interaction.
A reliable data infrastructure
The accelerated move to digital technologies is adding new challenges for data centre infrastructure and, most specifically, in storage.
Yidong Wang, vice-president of Huawei data storage product line, describes the new challenges as apps, data, and resilience.
In terms of new apps, a massive 89% of enterprise is now using multi-cloud, and 96% plan to build container clouds.
Meanwhile, 80% of new data is unstructured, with 86% of data centre electricity costs now going on opex.
Resilience is critical with most companies now experiencing an average of 16 days a year in downtime – costing them an average of $1,85-million in recovery. And 80% of users are hit by repeat attacks.
“Multi cloud convergence is necessary to eliminate data silos,” Wang says. “But efficient data management requires a unified O&M view and a unified data view. So companies require higher performance scale out storage with realtime data access for large and small files.”
With the growth in unstructured data, cost-effective storage is now an urgent priority. Wang believes this can be solved with high-density design, flash-driven data tiering, and data reduction and coding.
In addition, human-factor data security threats have resulted in the expansion of data resilience solutions.
Most importantly, organisations now require proactive defence rather than reactive remediation.
In this scenario, storage becomes the last line of defence.
Huawei helps customers to build efficient and secure data centres with flash to flash to anything architecture which allows them to build an isolation zone, production storage, backup storage, and archive storage.
“This increases data acceleration, data resilience, data management, and energy efficiency,” Wang says.
Huawei’s storage solutions are compatible with mainstream ecosystems in the industry, offer programmes and certification, and are made to grow together with partners.
“Storage is more important than ever for data centres,” he says. “We provide worry-free comprehensive ecosystems.”
Partnering for success
Partnering is a continuing theme through the Eco-Connect 2023 event. With more than 3 000 partners in sub-Saharan Africa, 90% of Huawei’s sales now go through the channel. Huawei supports these partners with $30-million in incentives.
Victor Guo, president of Huawei sub-Saharan Africa enterprise business unit, says that over the last couple of years Huawei has grown its partnering ecosystem. While the company’s overall revenue grew 34% in 2022, partners’ increased by 40%. By 2025, it is expected that $600-million of revenue will be achieved through partners.
The 3 000 partners in sub-Saharan Africa enjoy three types of support, says Guo.
Business development support includes a joint innovation lab, fast-tracking, and business sharing opportunities.
Capability support is through the ICT Academies, training courses, and a training fund.
Incentive support, to the tune of $30-million, is in the form of sales and capability incentives as well as joint marketing.
To ensure clarity on its three-tier operations, the company has also published its distribution policies for sub-Saharan Africa.
“Huawei can only succeed if its partners succeed first,” Guo says. “With partner support and customer trust, we can only go far.”