During the GITEX Global 2024, Huawei Cloud held its highly anticipated Huawei Cloud Summit UAE 2024, showcasing the company’s leadership in driving digital transformation and intelligence across industries in alignment with the ambitions of regional governments. The event underscored Huawei Cloud’s progress in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where its public cloud revenue has experienced a remarkable tenfold growth in the past year. The summit, themed “Leap to Intelligence with a Better Cloud,” emphasized Huawei Cloud’s unwavering commitment to enhancing the digital economy in the region by providing open, accessible, and cutting-edge technologies while cultivating talent and fostering industry ecosystems.
In his keynote address, Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East and Central Asia, highlighted the importance of vision, partnerships, and long-term commitment in achieving the digital strategies of nations. He emphasized that Huawei’s focus on AI, big data, and cloud technologies is driving regional innovation and enabling progress toward a smarter future for the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. He noted that Huawei Cloud’s role in this transformation is pivotal, offering the infrastructure and capabilities to support industries as they transition to a digital and intelligent era.
One of the key highlights of the summit was the virtual keynote delivered by Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, who used Huawei Cloud’s own virtual avatar technology for the presentation. She discussed the significance of tech innovations built on industry know-how and ecosystems, underscoring how ecosystems play a central role in digital transformation journeys. This aligns with Huawei Cloud’s strategic approach, where it collaborates with various industry players to create a robust ecosystem that accelerates digital transformation in the region.
Joy Huang, Vice President of Huawei Cloud and President of Huawei Cloud Strategy Industry Development, shared the impressive progress Huawei Cloud has made over the past year. He attributed this success to the strong support from customers and partners, reinforcing Huawei Cloud’s mission to continue innovating and improving infrastructure, technology, and user experience. He also outlined the company’s comprehensive ecosystem services, which cater to industries such as e-government, finance, telecommunications, media and entertainment, e-commerce, retail, and Web3. Huang further unveiled the Huawei Cloud Industry Solutions Joint Announcement, an initiative aimed at bringing global experience and ecosystem knowledge to the Middle East, thereby supporting regional industries’ intelligent growth.
A significant announcement came from Hu Yuhai, Vice President of Huawei Hybrid Cloud, who discussed the increasing adoption of hybrid cloud as the foundation for digital transformation in government organizations and large enterprises. He introduced Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 for the Middle East and Central Asia, which includes new solutions such as the Mainframe-to-Cloud Solution and additional use cases for Hybrid Cloud tailored to large AI models. Hu emphasized that Huawei Cloud Stack offers powerful cloud infrastructure, diverse cloud services, and industry-specific solutions, aiming to enhance the digital transformation efforts of government and enterprise customers. He also expressed Huawei Cloud’s ongoing commitment to investing in hybrid cloud solutions to accelerate industrial intelligence in the region.
Huawei Cloud’s leadership in the hybrid cloud market was confirmed by a recent survey from Omdia, a globally respected consultancy firm. The survey ranked Huawei Cloud Stack among the top performers in key categories such as cloud infrastructure, cloud architecture, and AI capabilities, recognizing the platform’s ability to optimize cloud service experiences, its suitability for training AI workloads, and its high reliability. Omdia also predicted that the demand for private and hybrid cloud solutions will rapidly increase across the Middle East, with Huawei Cloud Stack’s compliance with local regulations driving this growth.
Sebastian Shi, Managing Director of Huawei Cloud UAE, discussed the competitive advantage of Huawei Cloud in the Middle East and Central Asia. He highlighted the company’s commitment to delivering innovative, high-performance, and customer-centric services to help businesses and organizations in the region thrive. During his keynote, Shi, along with representatives from client companies like STARZPLAY and Omantel, shared successful case studies, demonstrating Huawei Cloud’s ability to help businesses across various sectors. Furthermore, the signing of Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with multiple sales partners during the event reflected the growing confidence in Huawei Cloud’s solutions and its role in building a comprehensive ecosystem that supports regional digital transformation.