The cloud will be vital as organisations race to become more intelligent by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). Why? “The cloud is not just a tech upgrade. Migrating to the cloud will help redefine the core competitiveness of industries,” Jacqueline Shi, president of global marketing and sales service at Huawei Cloud, tells DigitalEdge on the sidelines of Huawei Cloud Summit Singapore 2024.
She continues: “The cloud used to be resource-centric, focusing on allowing organisations to use cloud resources on-demand. Today, the cloud needs to be application-centric, meaning it must deliver cloud-native services (like databases) for applications to be built and grow in the cloud. Huawei Cloud can address those requirements as our cloud services are based on containers (or cloud-native), and we’ve redesigned our architecture to support containers everywhere.” The move can also help accelerate innovation, enabling organisations to easily connect to industry application programming interfaces (APIs) and other IT services like AI.
The tech aspect of the cloud
Organisations in Asia Pacific (Apac) are recognising the value of the cloud. Market research firm International Data Corp expects the region’s cloud-related spending to grow at a CAGR of 17.3% to reach US$329.1 billion ($442.6 billion) by 2027. The forecast includes spending on cloud-based services, managed services for cloud deployment and governance, and building and maintaining cloud environments.
Huawei Cloud operates in 93 availability zones across 33 regions globally to support its customers' cloud needs. With five availability zones based in Singapore, Huawei Cloud offers latency of below five milliseconds, making it ideal for serving local and Southeast Asian organisations with high-bandwidth, high-reliability and low-latency requirements, such as financial institutions.
The Huawei Cloud Stack (HCS) 8.3 was also recently released in Singapore, which provides over 100 cloud services in 13 categories to help organisations accelerate their intelligence journey. HCS is a hybrid cloud platform that can deploy AI cloud services and key products of large models at enterprises’ on-premises data centres.
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Huawei Cloud says that HCS 8.3 provides a “comprehensive AI pipeline, covering AI computing power, compute architectures, frameworks, development platforms, development suites, foundation models, and a wide range of professional services — all of which lower the barriers to entry when building large models”. It also leverages software-hardware synergy to optimise operator fusion and mixed precision, which has helped improve training efficiency by 45%. Putting it simply, HCS 8.3 is a one-stop platform for enterprises to build large, on-premises models.
Besides robust data security, HCS 8.3 offers data-AI convergence, blockchain, and privacy computing capabilities to help improve organisations’ data governance capabilities. This will be vital as organisations increasingly collect, process, store, transmit and use real-world data to improve operations, deliver better customer experiences and find new revenue streams.
Offering expertise-as-a-service
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Harnessing the potential of the cloud can be complex. Common challenges include migrating from a legacy to a cloud platform, modernising apps to become cloud-native, and managing or operating in a multi-cloud model, shares Shi. “Cloud migration is critical for enterprises to maintain their competitiveness towards the future. Beyond technology, organisations also require the expertise to help them develop a clear plan and schedule for migration to the cloud, modernise their software layer, and leverage toolchains for multi or hybrid cloud management and industry-specific use cases.”
Expertise-as-a-service, emphasises Shi, is one of Huawei Cloud’s key differentiators. She explains: “We’ve bundled technology and knowledge support to help customers unlock new competitiveness with the cloud. We work closely with customers to understand their real business requirements and find ways to solve their challenges. This also helps us understand the game rules of different industries and offer templates (including cloud migration maps, schedules and best practices) which cover common needs such as complying with sector-specific regulatory requirements. Customers can use the appropriate template and further work with us and our partners to refine it. Ultimately, we want to simplify the tech-related complexities for the cloud so that customers can easily pick and use the right cloud tools or services to address their business needs.”
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2024, Huawei launched 10 industrial digital and intelligent transformation solutions for large-scale industrial customers with diversified services and complex scenarios. The solutions include National Cloud Solution 2.0, Smart Classroom 3.0, Medical Technology Digitalization, Digital Core, Intelligent Factory, Smart Airport Fully Connected Fiber Network, Perimeter Security with Fiber Sensing, Smart Railway Perimeter Detection, ITS 2.0, Intelligent Power Distribution, and an Oil and Gas Pipeline Safety Management solution.
Moreover, Huawei has worked with its partners to develop more than 30 open, lightweight and scenario-specific solutions to help small- and medium-sized businesses achieve their digital and intelligent transformation goals. Huawei Cloud has over 45,000 partners worldwide to provide end-to-end services to organisations across industries.
Bridging countries
Since cloud computing breaks down traditional barriers related to geography and resource constraints, it can empower businesses to enter new markets and operate beyond their local shores. “The cloud is also a platform for local start-ups to embrace new markets. Together with the ecosystem, Huawei Cloud is helping local companies win the global market. [We’re doing so by being the] bridge between different countries through our programmes and service offerings,” says Shi.
For instance, Singapore’s conversational voice AI technology provider Wiz.AI was part of Huawei Cloud's Spark programme in its early stages. The Spark programme provides start-ups with the necessary resources — including financial aid, technical and go-to-market support, and access to mentors and training resources — to help accelerate growth.
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Today, Wiz.AI enables businesses to deliver hyper-personalised, omnichannel customer engagement at scale. It has also expanded its customer base to multiple Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.
Shi adds that Huawei Cloud makes it a priority to set up “strong local teams” as well as “offer training and knowledge transfer (in terms of tech and industry) opportunities to local partners” in the countries it operates in. This is because it is “dedicated to bringing more value to the local market” and understands that every country has unique requirements.
Building a cloud talent pipeline
As the cloud is set to be the foundation of intelligent businesses and the digital economy, a lack of adequately trained professionals may hinder innovation and progress. Recognising this, Huawei Cloud works with organisations and institutes of higher learning to nurture the new generation of tech and cloud talent.
For example, Asean Seeds for the Future is a collaborative programme between the Asean Foundation and Huawei. It aims to develop digital talent, share knowledge, increase ICT sector awareness and enthusiasm, and foster digital community building.
Besides that, Huawei has partnered with nine institutes of higher learning in Singapore to equip students with tech skills through the Huawei ICT Academy. The academy develops theoretical and practical courses covering the latest technologies, encouraging students to work towards Huawei’s ICT technical certifications. This helps develop technical professionals naturally inclined to solve issues in businesses or society using technology.
Shi adds that Huawei Cloud plans to build a platform that will offer developer-as-a-service. The platform will enable organisations to access tech talent, such as IT engineers or software developers, even if they are not in the same country or region.
Driving future growth
Huawei Cloud’s overall global business grew by 110% last year, while its revenue in Apac increased twenty-fold in the past five years. In Singapore, the company has served over 1,000 local organisations over the past five years and has reported over 100% revenue growth in the last year. The Green Link Digital Bank, Ninja Van and Wiz.AI are among Huawei Cloud’s customers in Singapore.
Shi says Huawei Cloud is committed to helping organisations become more intelligent and will continue building an open platform, expanding its presence (such as opening new cloud regions), and bringing its digital transformation know-how to more industries.
She adds: “On the tech side, we will invest and develop more innovations in the data and AI space as they will be key for the next two decades. This includes enhancements to IT infrastructure. For instance, reducing latency will enable more real-time and/or AI-based services like the digital avatars that can help organisations improve operations and deliver better customer experiences.
“You can think of the cloud as a supermarket, which needs to provide different solutions to organisations of varying sizes, industries and cloud or digital transformation maturity. To do so, we rely on our internal R&D team to find new areas of innovation as well as listen to customers and refine our technologies accordingly so that they meet real-world requirements. These two drivers will steer Huawei Cloud in the right direction for business growth.”
