GITEX Global 2024: Huawei’s Vision for a Digital and Intelligent Future
Exploring Huawei’s innovations in industrial transformation, AI, and digital infrastructure at the world’s largest tech event
Introduction
GITEX GLOBAL 2024, celebrating its 44th edition, stands as the world’s largest and most prestigious technology event. Held from October 14 to 18 at the Dubai World Trade Centre, the event attracted thought leaders, industry experts, and innovators from across the globe. This year’s theme, “ Global Collaboration to Forge a Future AI Economy,” encapsulated the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing, and their transformative impacts on industries and societies.
As a Key Opinion Leader and expert in digital transformation, attending GITEX was an extraordinary experience. With over 40 exhibition halls, 80+ solutions, and 60+ interactive demos, GITEX showcased the latest in cutting-edge technologies. Huawei, a Diamond Sponsor, played a pivotal role in the event, participated with theme “ Accelerate Industrial Digitalization and Intelligence”, demonstrating its leadership in driving industrial digitalization, AI-Ready infrastructure, and intelligent transformation across diverse sectors.
Thriving Together in the Intelligent Era: Huawei’s Vision for Digital Transformation
On October 14, Huawei hosted the Industrial Digital and Intelligent Transformation Summit at the Conrad Hotel. During the summit, Mr. Li Peng, Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, Huawei, delivered a compelling opening speech titled “Thriving Together in the Intelligent Era.”
Mr. Li emphasized that the global economy is evolving from a digital economy to an intelligent one, driven by advancements in AI, IoT, and real-time data processing. He highlighted how industries, particularly traditional sectors like manufacturing, are embracing digital and intelligent transformations to stay competitive. AI is increasingly becoming a tool for boosting productivity, cutting operational costs, and enhancing customer experiences.
Mr. Li detailed how Huawei is leveraging its strengths in networking, computing, cloud, storage, and energy to build robust infrastructures for digital transformation across various industries, including government, finance, transport, and energy. He shared several successful case studies, such as Huawei’s work with the Ministry of Transportation in Côte d’Ivoire, where AI-driven traffic analysis systems improved traffic flow by 10% and reduced road safety risks.
Huawei’s “All Intelligence” strategy, launched last year, continues to guide its efforts in developing industry-specific solutions, with over 100 transformation case studies now available. Mr. Li also highlighted Huawei’s commitment to fostering local partnerships, emphasizing the role of their 47,000 partners and 14 global OpenLabs in driving innovation and developing tailored solutions for industries.
He underscored Huawei’s focus on building local digital talent through partnerships with universities, creating ICT academies, and certifying professionals. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia alone, tens of thousands of students and professionals have received ICT training, strengthening the digital ecosystems in these regions.
In closing, Mr. Li reinforced Huawei’s vision of an inclusive digital transformation for all industries and regions, inviting more partners and customers to join in shaping this new era of intelligent technology. Huawei aims to continue developing scalable, targeted solutions to enable success on a global scale.
Accelerating Digital and Intelligent Transformation: A New Era of Industrial Productivity
In his keynote, Mr. Leo Chen, Corporate Senior Vice President, President of Enterprise Sales, Huawei, emphasized the transformative potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He highlighted that the fusion of AI, 5G-A, and cloud technologies is revolutionizing productivity and blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds.
Despite this progress, Mr. Chen identified three major challenges to fully realizing this potential:
- Digital Infrastructure: Less than 50% of devices are currently connected, and computing power remains expensive and insufficient.
- Industrial scenarios: enterprises need to apply the latest technologies to the industrial scenarios, so that industrial customers can more easily cross the digital “chasm “ and make the latest technologies, such as AI, , more adoptable by a broader user base across industries, as well as the more pragmatic mainstream market.
- Ecosystem Gaps: A lack of policies, talent, and ecosystems is holding back digital growth.
To address these issues, Mr. Chen outlined five strategic pillars:
- Strengthening AI-ready Infrastructure: Huawei is committed to building high-performance, AI-ready infrastructure that facilitates real-time data transmission and processing. Solutions like Wi-Fi 7 and all-flash storage products are part of Huawei’s portfolio to support this transformation.
- Applying Reference Models: Huawei’s 6-layer reference architecture and over 200 industry solutions are designed to guide companies through digital transformation. Successful applications, such as Union Bank’s digital loan system, demonstrate how Huawei’s models can accelerate transformation across industries.
- Building a Collaborative Ecosystem: The SHAPE framework emphasizes collaboration with partners to drive innovation and shared growth. Huawei is also focusing on bridging the global talent gap by training millions of professionals in digital and intelligent technologies by 2030.
- Talent: Huawei is working to address this issue by providing tech-based, practice-oriented enablement training. Huawei’s current target is to nurture over 10 million new tech professionals by 2030.
- An index that measures and evaluates ICT ROI: Huawei has developed a new Global Digital Index (GDI) alongside with IDC to offer customers worldwide quantitative evaluation indicators for transformation.
Mr. Chen concluded with a call for boldness and collaboration to harness the opportunities of the digital age. By working together and embracing these technologies, industries can leap forward in productivity and drive global economic progress.
Innovations at the Huawei Booth
Huawei’s booth at GITEX 2024 was a central attraction, featuring five key demonstration areas focused on themes like Industrial Digitalization and Intelligence, Ecosystem and Partners, Huawei Cloud, Intelligent Data Centers, and Intelligent Campuses. Attendees had the opportunity to engage with over 80 solutions and 60+ interactive demos, experiencing firsthand the advanced technologies that are reshaping industries.
Huawei’s Wi-Fi 7, the industry’s highest-performance network solution, and its AI-ready all-flash storage were key highlights, demonstrating Huawei’s ability to offer high-speed, real-time data transmission and efficient data storage and retrieval. These solutions are designed to help industries build robust digital and intelligent infrastructure, enabling businesses to adopt AI-powered tools more effectively.
During the event, I had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Michael Qiu, President of Huawei Global Data Storage Marketing & Solutions Sales, where we discussed Huawei’s AI-ready Next-Generation All-Flash Data Center solution. This innovative solution aims to accelerate enterprise upgrades, providing comprehensive data protection and enabling secure, efficient data transfer. We explored how this technology is reshaping industries such as finance, healthcare, and education by improving data processing and supporting AI and big data applications.
Case Study: Reshaping Traditional Industries with Tech
One of the standout case studies at GITEX focused on Huawei’s efforts to digitally transform traditional industries. Huawei’s Integrated Teams work closely with industries like energy, mining, and public utilities to develop tailored digitalization solutions. The State Grid Shaanxi collaboration showcased Huawei’s ability to build intelligent distribution networks, improve power supply, and promote clean energy solutions. This partnership, alongside other innovations in IoT management and edge computing, highlighted Huawei’s impact on reducing operational costs and driving efficiency.
In the public sector, Huawei’s partnerships with cities around the world are enabling governments to improve urban management through smart technologies. The Smart City Governance platform in Shenzhen, China, for example, uses AI to respond to public inquiries in under a minute, streamlining urban governance.
Conclusion: Huawei’s Vision for the Intelligent Era
GITEX Global 2024 provided a comprehensive look into how Huawei is leading the digital transformation across industries. The company’s commitment to building AI-ready infrastructure, fostering innovation ecosystems, and enabling businesses to navigate the complexities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution was on full display. From Mr. Li Peng’s insights into digital transformation strategies to Mr. Leo Chen’s vision for AI-powered productivity, it is clear that Huawei is not just shaping the future of technology but also redefining how industries operate in the digital age.
With its emphasis on collaboration, innovation, and sustainable growth, Huawei is positioned to drive the next wave of digital transformation. As industries worldwide embrace AI, cloud, and IoT technologies, Huawei’s solutions are bridging the gap between aspiration and achievement, empowering businesses to thrive in this new era.
Originally published at https://kenovy.com on October 25, 2024.
