Artificial Intelligence (AI), deep partner collaboration, and building a strong ecosystem foundation were championed as next-level growth engines to new opportunities in industry digitisation at the recent Huawei Cloud APAC Partner Connection Summit 2024.
Huawei Cloud Asia Pacific hosted approximately 500 participants comprising partners from over 13 countries at its invitation-only partner event, held under the theme 'Accelerate Intelligence with Everything as a Service'. The annual summit took place on March 26 and 27 at Huawei's Songshan Lake Campus, in Dongguan, China.
Gratitude to the Partners and Growth Milestones
In the summit's opening address, President of Huawei Cloud Computing Global Marketing and Sales Service Dept Jacqueline Shi attributed the tremendous growth in the last four years to the immense support of its partners. She highlighted that in the Asia Pacific region, there was a 300% increase in the number of partners with annual revenue exceeding $10 million, $5 million, and $1 million.
"KooVerse, our global infrastructure, covers 30 Regions and 84 availability zones and we are still expanding our coverage. We strive to build Huawei Cloud KooVerse into the bedrock for global partners to quickly explore local business in a secure, compliant manner, and empower customers with the best performance and experience."
"In the past few years, Huawei Cloud has been investing in technologies. We are the leading cloud service provider in Big Data & AI. Huawei will continue as an innovative company and provide customers and partners with the most advanced technologies and solutions," she said.
Jacqueline further elaborated, "Huawei Cloud has accumulated excellent experience in the digital transformation of China's Internet and government & enterprise industries, we hope to bring these best practices from China to our customers and partners on the global stage. We hope we can help build a localized ecosystem for governments, enterprises and partners in countries and regions outside China."
Huawei Cloud Ecosystem Strategy for 2024
In his keynote speech, President of Huawei Cloud Computing Global Ecosystem Dept Ken Kang outlined the key areas that will drive the Huawei Cloud ecosystem strategy for 2024. "At present, we have more than 45,000 partners worldwide to provide customers with end-to-end services. Through both online and offline sales channels, we have contributed thousands of sales opportunities to our partners and achieved an overall sales growth of 123% through Huawei Cloud Store KooGallery, forming a win-win situation."
"Developers are the core of our ecosystem. With more than 160 innovation centers and two competency centers around the world, we equip developers with enablement, certification and technical support services. Our pool of developers outside of China has developed a CAGR of over 400%."
Ken elaborated that the six industries of focus are finance, retail, carrier, healthcare, education, and automobile, where more than 100 joint solutions will be built based on customer requirements to accelerate the digital transformation of industry customers. Additionally, a Digital Transformation and System Integration partner program centering on consulting and industry Systems Integrators (SIs) will be kicked off. Manpower resources for partners will be increased via the deployment of Dedicated Partner Success Managers in Huawei offices outside of China.
Hybrid Cloud Takes the Lead with Fast Breakthroughs in Big Data & AI Markets
Huawei Cloud APAC President Zeng Xingyun zeroed in on the fast breakthroughs Huawei Cloud has scored in the Big Data & AI markets in his keynote presentation. In 2023, it is expected that the overall cloud business in Asia Pacific will grow by 77%, the number of big data and AI projects will increase fivefold, and the revenue will increase tenfold. In the past four years, the revenue of Huawei Cloud in the Asia Pacific has increased twentyfold, making it the fastest-growing mainstream cloud service provider in the Asia Pacific.
"We will focus on 6 star products and solutions, including Huawei Cloud Stack, Big Data & AI, Media Services, Database, Security and PaaS, to deepen cooperation with top professional partners. In addition, we will provide 15% to 25% in extra incentives to help partners improve their professional service and sales capabilities and develop key products and solutions in market segments."
Meanwhile, Frost & Sullivan's Emerging Asia-Pacific Hybrid Cloud Market Report placed Huawei Cloud ahead of all other providers in terms of market performance, technical innovation, and customer services. Additionally, Huawei Cloud took top market share in the hybrid cloud markets in Hong Kong (China), Thailand, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Sri Lanka and is second in Singapore and Malaysia.
He also outlined the six collaborative efforts for shared success, which were shared sales, shared market, shared ecosystem, shared infrastructure, shared technology, and shared platform.
Partner Sales Acceleration
Meanwhile, in another keynote address, President of Huawei Cloud APAC Sales Partner Development Dept Nicole Lu mentioned that in 2024, Huawei Cloud will continue to strengthen the win-win model for partners in the Asia Pacific region entrust partners to help us build and develop the market, and enable partners to directly reach customers, so as to explore business opportunities and expand the business scope.
Nicole also revealed the expansion of the Big Bet Partners Program. First introduced in 2023, it targets partners who have made or intend to make $1 million. The program has large revenue targets, which will be set in signed framework agreements. There will be an additional 15% incentive and preferential distribution of Huawei opportunities to ensure targets are met.
Cloud for AI, AI for Cloud
To help organisations leverage on AI, Huawei Cloud's Chief Product Officer William Fang in his keynote emphasised the two-prong strategy offered by Huawei: 'Cloud for AI' and 'AI for Cloud'.
The 'Cloud for AI' strategy helps organisations ensure their cloud infrastructure capably supports the effective use of AI. In 'AI for Cloud', Pangu Models are bridging the chasm between AI and industry needs with powerful scenario and industry-specific models. For example, the Pangu automotive model provides AI-assisted vehicle design while the Pangu weather model enables typhoon tracking.
Key innovations that were emphasised were GaussDB, Pangu AI Models, Huawei Cloud Stack amongst others.
At this summit, Huawei Cloud launched the product portfolio for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), including HECS X Instance, HECS L Instance, HCCE,?and HGaussDB,?which?will?be?available?in?April.?HECS?X?instance?is?Huawei?Cloud's?new solution,?purpose-built for?flexible?computing.?It marks?how?Huawei?Cloud?is?supporting?the?shift?from?elastic?computing?to?flexible?computing,?to?meet?customer?needs?with?adaptive computing?on?demand. With HECS X instance, users can select whatever they want from more than 100 custom specifications. It offers?two?times?the?performance?at?the?same?specifications?and?the?leapfrog?experience?at?an?affordable?price. ?
Mark Chen, President of Huawei Cloud Computing Solution Sales Dept, pointed out that Huawei Cloud will bring value to customers and partners through continuous innovation of the preceding products and solutions. In addition, Huawei Cloud will work with partners to launch products and solutions in the GTM phase, facilitating end customers to use the cloud and manage the cloud.
The summit also marked the launch of the Huawei Cloud AI Services APAC Partner Ecosystem, as well as presented partners with various awards in recognition of their outstanding work and significant achievements in various areas of cloud technology.