At the Huawei Cloud Summit, held yesterday at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, Huawei Cloud pledged to accelerate the digital transformation for local industries over the next five years. This to support the implementation of South Africa's National Digital and Cloud Policy, in order to drive the growth of the country’s digital economy.

The inaugural Huawei Cloud Summit brought together public and private sector stakeholders with Huawei executives and Huawei Cloud ecosystem partners to align on strategies for better cloud infrastructure and digitisation in South Africa.

The company notes Huawei Cloud has been in South Africa since 2019 and in this time its public cloud business has grown more than 16 times, making it one of the top three cloud providers in the local Internet as a service market.

Among the headline speakers at the summit was Jacqueline Shi, president of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service. She expressed how, “Huawei Cloud is committed to building a digital South Africa with social equality, cultural diversity, and economic prosperity. We strive to build a new intelligent foundation through continuous technological innovation.”

“Huawei Cloud hopes to build a local platform that empowers South Africa and its enterprises. Only when the local ecosystem is sustainable and healthy can the digitisation dream be fully realised,” said Shi.

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani, director-general of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, outlined how the state aims to create an enabling environment for all sectors to grow the digital economy.

“Our priority remains driving the digital transformation process. This will enable inclusive growth and job creation. We also want to reduce poverty and address essential services like healthcare, education, security and e-government,” said Jordan-Dyani.

Jordan-Dyani spoke about the crucial role that public cloud infrastructure will play in unlocking growth opportunities and added that data sovereignty is a priority for the government. “Partners like Huawei have assisted us in making sure we have stored our data locally,” she added.

A cloud-first digital economy powered by AI

“With no cloud there can be no digitisation,” said Will Meng, CEO of Huawei South Africa. He underscored the company's commitment to building localised capabilities and services in South Africa.

Meng spoke to Huawei’s 25-year history in South Africa and how it introduced the first large-scale data centres to deliver massive computing power and storage capacity to the country in 2019. “Now we want to share our global expertise in leveraging cloud and AI models with local partners.”

Huawei has implemented different cloud solutions around the world, and it is now eager to bring more of these innovations to South Africa, furthering the National Cloud service it has already built.

The company notes its collaboration with countries like Singapore and Saudi Arabia has allowed Huawei Cloud to create a dual base of cloud and AI expertise. In the future, Huawei Cloud hopes to bring these advanced global practices to South Africa and support the sustainable development of its digital economy.

Mark Chen, president of Global Solutions and Sales at Huawei Cloud, announced that Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 would now be available in South Africa. This new offering the company believes will take a hybrid approach and bring advantages of more powerful cloud infrastructure, advanced cloud services and better industry-specific solutions within Huawei’s Cloud Stack.

Flexus series cloud services and the industry-specific Pangu Models will also be introduced to the market to tackle complex issues for South African enterprises.

Chen also outlined the successes that the company has achieved in South Africa. “We supply 15ms low latency coverage across South Africa and we offer 53ms low latency coverage across Sub-Saharan Africa.”

A prosperous South African digital

Huawei Cloud notes it is committed to creating a flourishing local ecosystem by collaborating with system integrators and independent software vendors. Huawei has launched several digital talent cultivation projects like Leap, ICT Academy, and Seeds for the Future, benefiting over 16,000 people.

Also at this summit, a position paper titled, Cloud Computing: Striding Towards the Intelligent World, was released. This resource features digital transformation case studies from eight industries including government, healthcare, education, finance, manufacturing, and the Internet.

In closing the day’s proceedings, Steven Chen CEO of Huawei Cloud South Africa, spoke to the company’s efforts to build relationships with local stakeholders and expand its impact in South Africa. “We love our partners, and our growth and success would not be possible without them. With our ecosystems and solutions, we can make a digital South Africa better together.”

Image: Will Meng, CEO of Huawei South Africa