Huawei, a global provider of ICT infrastructure and smart devices, has pledged to use its own digital transformation experience to help African customers accelerate business intelligence.

Dawei LI, vice president of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa, told ITWeb about diversified computing centers and enabling green and smart Africa at the recent Pan-African Data Centres Exhibition and Conference in Johannesburg, which was attended by nearly 3,000 global data center energy customers.

Li discussed about Huawei's position and solutions in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud computing, and Data centres, as well as the company's newest insights and goals in Africa.

Artificial intelligence is the boss.

Regarding AI, Li said that in the AI era, data flows faster, and the value of data as a tool of production becomes increasingly essential.

He explained: “Data centres are responsible for centralised storage, computing, and exchange of data resources. Huawei provides storage products and solutions for rapidly growing and diverse service data.

“First, through full life-cycle data protection services (including intra-city active-active, remote disaster recovery, 3 DCs in 2 city, multi-center, and storage ransomware protection solutions), customer service can be always-online, data will be stored in long-term and never be lost, ensuring data security for the intelligent world.

“Besides, Huawei provides storage operation supporting service to help customers efficiently manage data, activate data value, and promote service innovation.”

Everyone is gaining access to the cloud

In terms of cloud computing, Li believes that African consumers across a range of industries are aggressively embracing cloud and AI technology. However, he emphasised that they are still encountering problems in shifting to and using cloud services, such as frequent submarine optical cable failures, trouble accessing cloud resources, and data localisation.

Li told ITWeb that Huawei Cloud is one of the world's fastest-growing cloud service providers, and as a result, the business intends to provide cutting-edge technology to consumers on the continent and offer them the finest options.

In response to the issues faced by African customers, Li said Huawei Cloud primarily provides support in three areas.

He elaborates: “First, Huawei Cloud provides multiple solutions, such as public cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge cloud, to meet customer service requirements in different development phases and service scenarios.

“Second, in the past few years, we have continued to strengthen our investment in cloud infrastructure in Africa. Providing local cloud services in South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and other places allows African customers to easily access the best-performing, truly trustworthy, secure and compliant cloud.

“Finally, Huawei Cloud has accumulated Huawei's own digital transformation experience and excellent practices in other regions of the world on the cloud, and worked with partners to create industry scenario solutions to help African customers accelerate business intelligence.”

Data centres are the new the homes

On data centers, Li said that as the tides of globalisation and intelligence collide, Africa is at a new turning point in the development of artificial intelligence.

Li emphasized that intelligent computing has already brought four major changes to data centres.

He said: “Shorter construction period- Referring to the rapid user growth trend of ChatGPT, data centers, as the infrastructure of intelligent computing require faster, better and more flexible construction to match business development demands.

“The capability of fast and high-quality construction has become the core competitiveness of data center business. The data centers require shorter and shorter construction period, from 18 to 24 months previously to 9 to 10 months now, and it has brought huge challenges to our construction model.”

Secondly, Li points out higher power density, saying: “The power density of a single cabinet in a data center is increasing rapidly because of higher power consumption of AI servers. The requirement of single cabinet grows from 5 to 8 kW to 40 to 60 kW, or even more than 100 kW (for example, NVIDIA's latest intelligent computing cabinet reaches 120 kW/cabinet).

“The traditional water-cooling and air-cooling technology are no longer suitable, and we must adopt a liquid-cooling solution with higher heat dissipation efficiency to match future business development.”

Thirdly, increasing difficulty to obtain power is a concern for Li; he said the surge in computing power leads to huge power consumption that is why there is the saying that ‘the end of AI is energy storage’.

He said: “In the future, an intelligent computing center will consume even more power than a small or medium city. With the policy on carbon emission, it’ll become more and more difficult for data centers to obtain enough power, and green power becomes necessary to move forward.”

Li also expressed concern about increased security requirements, saying that as intelligent computing evolves and begins to dominate businesses and people's lives, the social impact and economic losses caused by business disruption will be unfathomable.

“As the foundation for AI services, improving the security of the power supply and distribution system is the key to improve the reliability of data centers,” Li said.

The future is only as bright as you keep your mind open.

In conclusion, Li said all is not gloomy as companies like Huawei have solutions to support the implementation of intelligent computing on the continent.

Li detailed Huawei solutions: “With all of requirements and challenges, customers need stable and long-term evolving data center facility to support the development of their business, which should be more comprehensive, efficient and intelligent in terms of architecture design, business launch and system operation.”

To this end, he said: “In this era of change, Huawei takes F.A.S.T. (flexible, high availability, space optimization, and short construction period) as the core advantages.

“Considering the urgent need for rapid and efficient construction of data centers in Africa, Huawei has developed solutions like FusionBlock DC. It can not only respond quickly to market changes, shorten construction period, and reduce uncertainties, but also lay a solid foundation for the future expansion and sustainable development of intelligence in Africa.”

In addition, Li said: “Huawei works with high-quality partners in the industry to build a partnership system covering the entire life-cycle from data center design, solution development, and integrated delivery.

“The partners from product side can cover the container, diesel engine, power distribution, power environment. There are also experienced global consulting and design companies and engineering construction partners to provide customers with full life cycle services from front-end to after-sales.”

According to Li, Huawei is constantly defining its development vision, strengthening infrastructure construction, actively promoting technological innovation and international cooperation, and prioritising talent training and data security to ensure that the path to sustainable development is consistent and long-term.