Huawei Cloud innovations such as the new Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 and Huawei Cloud Flexus are now in South Africa, offering local organisations more choice in cloud infrastructure and technologies to support digital transformation.
Speaking at Huawei Cloud’s first National Summit in South Africa this week, Mark Chen, President, Global Solution Sales at Huawei Cloud, highlighted key new offerings now available in the South African market.
Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5, the company's latest hybrid cloud version, meets strong local demand for sophisticated hybrid cloud solutions. It provides more than 120 on-premises cloud services in 13 categories, with 50 industry scenario-specific solutions.
New for small and mid-sized businesses is the local availability of Huawei Cloud Flexus, with flexible configurations, Al-driven high speed and 6x burst speed performance, and a 30%-35% saving on normal virtual machines.
Huawei Cloud also showcased its multimodal large language model Pangu, designed to help streamline AI adoption, and GaussDB next-generation distributed, AI-native database, described as ‘the better way to database’.
Chen said: “Huawei Cloud is the fastest-growing cloud provider, working with over 45 000 partners to continually build more innovative solutions. South Africa is one of the most dynamic emerging economies in the world, and Huawei Cloud is excited and proud to be contributing to the country’s digital transformation with our cloud infrastructure and solutions.”
He noted that Huawei Cloud, with three local availability zones, offers robust, reliable infrastructure and over 100 cloud services, supported by over 1 000 engineers. Huawei has reiterated its mission to help build a prosperous, cloud-first digital South Africa.
Steven Chen, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud South Africa, highlighted the important role partners played in driving growth and innovation: “Working with our partners, we’ve become a better cloud."
The summit, attended by over 1 000 decision-makers from the public and private sector, explored the role of secure, reliable cloud infrastructure in enabling organisations to harness transformative technologies for economic growth in South Africa.
Cloud for business transformation
Customers such as Pandelani Munyai, Transnet Group CIO, outlined how they are benefiting from the Huawei Cloud. Munyai said: “In the cloud, there are so many features and integrations into native services, which enable us to automate, digitise operations and improve efficiencies. You will find it very difficult to digitise and harness technologies like AI if you don’t use cloud infrastructure and services.”
Sunil Nagar, head of Technology & Operations at Standard Bank IAM, said data and AI were key priorities in the organisation’s digital journey. “Data is the bridge bringing business and technology together, but it requires a mature, cloud-based platform.” He said Standard Bank Group and Huawei Cloud have a solid partnership to help the financial services organisation optimise cloud and data.
Huawei Cloud is also working with leading organisations such as Sekunjalo Group and Inzalo EMS to help transform and grow their businesses.
Cloud for economic development
Nonkqubela Thathakahle Jordan-Dyani, Director-General in the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, emphasised the importance of the cloud in underpinning digital development in South Africa.
“Intelligent and reliable cloud services are the cornerstone of the national digital agenda,” she said.
The Director-General noted that the National Data and Cloud Policy, a framework aimed at efficiently managing and utilising data through cloud computing technologies, recognised data as a strategic asset and enabler for the digital economy, and had a strong focus on data sovereignty. “In this, partners like Huawei Cloud assist us by storing data locally,” she said.
A panel discussion on cloud and AI featured thought leaders Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Marketing and Sales Service, Juanita Clark, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Digital Council Africa, Alfred Mmoto, Acting Deputy Director General: ICT Policy Development and Strategy at the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, and Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, CEO of Naspers.
They emphasised the importance of the public and private sectors working together to ensure equitable access to the internet and emerging technologies, to enable all South Africans to take advantage of opportunities in the digital economy.
Click here to read more about the Huawei Cloud Summit.
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