Huawei launches new Cloud Stack

Huawei revealed the new Huawei Cloud Stack 8.3 offering during a keynote speech at the Huawei Africa Connect 2024 conference in Johannesburg this week.

Hu Yuhai, vice president of Huawei Hybrid Cloud, made the announcement in a keynote address titled “Leap to Cloud to Accelerate Industrial Intelligence”. He said that the Huawei Cloud Stack provided trusted cloud infrastructure, innovative cloud service abilities and extensive industry know-how to help government and enterprise customers in Africa accelerate cloud adoption.

In line with this, he said, Huawei Cloud had ramped up investments in Africa to support the continent’s development into an intelligent digital hub. The journey began in 2018, with the launch of Africa’s first Huawei public cloud region in Johannesburg. This was followed by a significant expansion in June 2024, with the launch of Northern Africa’s first Huawei public cloud region in Cairo, Egypt. Huawei Cloud has been recognised as one of the fastest-growing cloud providers in the world.

“Huawei Cloud strives to be the preferred cloud for intelligent transformation,” said Hu. “As per our mission statement of being, ‘In Africa, For Africa’, we are ready to work alongside our customers and partners with better technologies, industry solutions, and ecosystem resources.”

Huawei’s expanded cloud activity reflects the fact that government and enterprise customers in Africa are keen to embrace intelligent and digital transformation. 

Huawei provided the following information on Huawei Cloud Stack 8.3 and its activities at the conference:

Huawei Cloud Stack 8.3 boasts a wide array of enhanced cloud services and features to provide a trusted, more resilient cloud native foundation. It boosts innovation in the following key areas and making new technologies locally available as fast as possible:

l    Trusted cloud infrastructure: Huawei has continuously invested in foundational software and hardware technologies alike, has established secure, reliable, and open cloud native infrastructure, and provides green, low-carbon IT hardware and data center infrastructure. Huawei aims to lay a robust foundation for digital transformation in Africa.

l    Innovative cloud service abilities: Huawei leverages data and AI technologies to provide numerous cloud services, aiming to help customers unleash the value of data and enhance data sovereignty.

l    Extensive industry know-how: Huawei provides a series of professional services, covering high-level design, service planning, implementation, and deliveries, based on robust experience from numerous global projects. Huawei looks to work with more industry partners to help customers accelerate intelligent and digital transformation.

In Africa, For Africa: Huawei Cloud Stack accelerates industry intelligence for Africa with three strengths

During the conference, Huawei also held its “Leap2Cloud”event, which attracted more than 300 enterprise executives and IDC experts customers from diverse sectors like government, finance, transportation, and energy in Sub-Saharan Africa. They came together to share their insights and collaboratively explore pathways for a leap to the cloud.

_{Bai Yan, Vice President of Huawei Cloud for the Sub-Saharan Africa Region}

During the event, Bai Yan, Vice President of Huawei Cloud for the Southern Africa Region, delivered a keynote speech titled, “Huawei Cloud Stack, the Preferred Cloud for Africa Industry Digitalisation.”

“As industry customers drive forward with cloud adoption and intelligent transformation, they encountered certain challenges, such as unforeseen issues with submarine optical cables, inefficient methods of acquiring cloud resources, and concerns over data sovereignty,” he said. “Huawei Cloud Stack helps them address these challenges with three strengths. It provides on-premised, reliable and secure cloud infrastructure, as well as offers an extensive suite of over 110 cloud services—unmatched in the industry—alongside a diversified partner ecosystem. All these are designed to help government and enterprise customers in Africa accelerate industry intelligence.”

Huawei Cloud is eager to enhance cooperation with industry customers and partners to develop scenario-specific solutions tailored to industry needs in Africa and create a thriving local digital ecosystem together.

_{Xiao Yi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Ecosystem Solution Dept}

“Digital transformation is currently experiencing an exponential growth,” said Xiao Yi, President of Huawei Cloud’s Global Ecosystem Solution Department. “We are stepping into the era of intelligence. Huawei Cloud looks forward to joining hands with African partners to build a new foundation for an intelligent world, develop digital solutions, and reshape industries with intelligence.”

With innovative technologies and a vast array of industry-specific solutions, Huawei Cloud Stack currently serves more than 5,500 government and enterprise customers around the world, leading multiple markets, such as the hybrid cloud markets in China and the emerging Asia-Pacific region.

Moving forward, Huawei Cloud will continue to spur innovation, expand industry know-how, and develop more customer-centric services to help more African customers move to, use, and manage the cloud better. Huawei Cloud looks forward to joining hands with more African customers to unlock new opportunities in industry intelligence and create an intelligent future.