China Internet:Huawei Cloud,from private to public,from the outside inward

Huawei Connect 2017 – “Grow with the cloud”.

    Huawei at its annual event this week revealed 238% growth in cloudsubscribers since March. The company, which has derived 70% of cloud revsfrom overseas, has launched 40+ new services and added 4500+ new featuresto its cloud platform since March. CEO Guo Ping announced plans to invest 5%of company R&D into areas such as network security, and reiterated Huawei’sdetermination to make significant inroads in the public cloud space.

    Traditional sectors accelerate embrace of cloud.

    Many of Huawei’s cloud partners such as ICBC (Industrial and Commerce Bankof China), CPIC (China Pacific Insurance Co.), Shenzhen Traffic Police Bureau,DPCA (Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile), Bosch and Dassault presentedduring the event, sharing their vision of the cloud. Digitalization, big data, AIwere the most prevalent themes across presentations. Traditional sectors haveclearly already started to implement cloud, exploring how to better leveragetheir data to make their businesses smarter.

    Huawei Cloud EI (Enterprise Intelligence) vs. AliCloud ET.

    Huawei during the event officially launched “Huawei Cloud EI”, an AI (ArtificialIntelligence) platform which claims strong big data analytics, deep learning,voice and visual recognition etc. The EI platform can be applied to differentscenarios such as intelligent supply chain, intelligent finance and smart cities.

    AliCloud launched its own “ET” platform a year ago and has alreadyimplemented across many sectors such as industrial, healthcare, andenvironmental. Tencent also introduced several AI applications earlier this year.

    Huawei seeks to close the gap on the software side where we believe internetcompanies such as Alibaba and Tencent have distinct advantages.

    Competition landscape – Huawei likely to dominate private, and BABA public.

    Huawei claimed that its cloud business has come to grow the fastest amongall domestic players since this year. Its strong relationships with traditionalsectors and deep IT knowledge of specific verticals do make it a powerfulplayer in the cloud area. Absolute leader AliCloud on the other hand seems tohave a clear advantage around software innovations and fast market response.

    We expect AliCloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei, all to benefit from China’sgrowing demand for cloud computing, big data, and AI. Each of them shouldattract different audience groups as we suggest in our 83pp Aug 4 Cloud FITT.

    We expect hybrid cloud solutions to become more important for traditionalsectors as some institutions such as government and financial organizationswhich regard data security and privacy as their greatest priority may not moveall of their data onto the public cloud in the near-term.

    Please join us: China Internet conference this Friday in Hong Kong.

    Huawei Cloud BU Product VP Jason Wu will join our China Internet conferencein Hong Kong this Friday at 9:30am at our ICC offices. Please contact your DBsalesperson to sign up to attend the keynote or the broader day-long event.