Huawei Cloud sees its AI-driven everything-as-a-service foundation, open cloud platform, and focus on hybrid cloud deployment in vertical markets as key drivers of its growth strategy in South Africa.
The Chinese tech giant was the first hyperscale cloud services provider to open a data centre region or availability zone in the country, in 2019.
It claims 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 in addition to Microsft Azure and Google.
At the first Huawei Cloud South Africa Summit hosted in Midrand, Johannesburg, this week, executives highlighted growth potential in key sectors like finance, agriculture, mining, government services, retail, and manufacturing.
National cloud and data policy
South Africa's National Policy on Data and Cloud was a significant part of discussions at the Summit.
In her keynote address, Nonkqubela Thathakahle Jordan-Dyani, director-general (DG) of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, said the government of national unity considers digital innovation as critical to addressing challenges and priorities such as job creation, cost of living, and the rollout of essential services.
“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.
The DG said that public cloud infrastructure is key to unlocking growth opportunities, adding that data sovereignty is front-of-mind for government.
“There is a strong focus on data sovereignty (in the policy), but in order to store data locally, we need more investment… public cloud infrastructure will play a key role in digital transformation.”
Huawei Cloud has invested in data centres over the past five years and deployed three availability zones in Johannesburg, while advocating for each country to have its own data sovereignty.
Jacqueline Shi, president of Huawei Cloud global marketing and sales service, said, “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.”
Shi said Huawei Cloud aims 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,” she said.
Important time
William Dong, president of the marketing department at Huawei Cloud, said: “We think that the cloud and AI technology would be the best choice for digitalisation. We can bring the latest technology, industry best practice and expertise to boost local industry.”
According to Dong, Huawei Cloud’s competitive advantage over other hyperscalers is its understanding of the local market and its strong focus on vertical sectors.
Dong said that hybrid cloud will gain traction because while public cloud enables AI services, large enterprises, especially in finance and government, will need to deploy LLMs in their own environment and this will require hybrid cloud.
New product
Mark Chen, president of global solutions and sales at Huawei Cloud, announced that Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 is available in South Africa.
Chen said the new offering 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.
The company also showcased its Flexus servers, designed as ready out-of-the-box for medium and light workloads. Flexus cloud services, and the industry-specific multimodal LLM PanGu Models will also be introduced to the market.
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