When it comes to attracting customers to your company’s service, the most effective ways are through lower prices, better service or ease of use. These are, in fact, all reasons given by Huawei for the recent growth in customer numbers for its Huawei Cloud offering.
According to Michael Langeveld, Huawei’s vice-president for Cloud Africa, the number of net new customers the company has acquired includes a large percentage of those who are new entrants to the cloud, due to the changes driven by COVID-19. There are also many customers who have moved to Huawei from rival cloud hyperscalers.
“The latter have moved largely, I think, due to the way we go to market from a costing perspective. I would say that when it comes to the most common workloads, Huawei is around 15% to 25% more cost-effective than its competitors. It isn’t surprising to discover that companies that already recognise the price value of the cloud also understand the importance of moving to the cloud provider that offers them the most value for money,” he says.
“Huawei is able to achieve this because, unlike our rivals, we not only make our own chips, but put these in our own servers, storage and computing. This means customers don’t have to stress about having to buy each of these from different providers and then fit it all together in a package that works effectively. Considering the fact that we live and breathe optimisation, we are also able to get the highest performance from our offering, because, from start to finish, the technology is Huawei.
“Furthermore, when one looks at Huawei’s end-to-end value proposition, we offer even more – we provide mobile devices in the consumer space, but also deliver services in the carrier and network arenas. By bundling all of these with the cloud, we are able to bring additional value in ways our partners and customers would never have thought possible.”
Langeveld adds there is no doubt that at present, everyone is in a tough position in the context of both the local and global economy. Despite this, he indicates that Huawei SA plans to continue its investments in the country, even when competitors are slowing down in this space due to the recession.
“We continued to do this throughout the lockdown, and invested wisely enough that, soon, we expect to open a second availability zone that will enable customers from South Africa and the African continent to access even more cloud services.”
Another differentiator, he adds, is that the company proves its ability to solve customer challenges before expecting them to purchase anything.
“We always engage with customers in order to understand exactly what issues they are trying to solve via the cloud. We then embed our own solutions architects with the customer to assist – with costs covered by us – and once clear regarding what needs to be done, Huawei Cloud makes its platform available, again at its own cost, to prove that we can solve their problem.
“Essentially, we demonstrate the answer to their problem before expecting them to purchase anything. This is a key part of our great Huawei customer experience.”
Finally, adds Langeveld, Huawei also provides training and certifications for customers and partners, at its own expense. This is vital, he adds, because although the digital economy is the next big thing, it is imperative to ensure there are enough skills in the market to help grow the economy as whole.
“Huawei understands the importance of leveraging technology to transform current businesses and to enable the public sector to deliver new services. To this end, we continue to create job opportunities through our local investments, while also training and certifying partners and customers, to ensure that as the digital market grows, the skills base can keep pace with it,” he concludes.
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