HUAWEI AFRICA CONNECT 2024 | Building leading AI-ready data infrastructure to accelerate digital, intelligent transformation in sub-Saharan African region
From 2 to 3 July, HUAWEI AFRICA CONNECT 2024 was successfully held in Johannesburg, South Africa. During this event, Huawei invited industry experts, key opinion leaders and ecosystem partners from the southern African region to discuss data infrastructure construction in the AI era. Huawei also shared best practices and insights related to trending topics such as data protection, ransomware protection and data centre evolution. The aim of the event was to facilitate the digital and intelligent transformation of enterprises in the sub-Saharan African region.
Redefining data storage in the data awakening era
On 2 July, at HUAWEI AFRICA CONNECT 2024, Dr Peter Zhou, Vice-President of Huawei and President of Huawei Data Storage Product Line, delivered a keynote speech about how AI will disrupt traditional data storage by not only focusing on performance, reliability and data paradigm, but also on scalability, sustainability and data fabric. In the data awakening era, Huawei redefines data storage by leading innovation focused on these six dimensions. Huawei recently launched the OceanStor A800 high-performance storage, the 128TB SSDs, and the Omni-Dataverse global file system, which will help customers build leading AI-ready data infrastructure and unlock the value of their data.
Building AI-ready data infrastructure to accelerate digital and intelligent transformation in the southern African region
On 3 July, the Huawei Innovative Data Infrastructure (IDI) Forum 2024 was successfully held in Johannesburg. Mad Chen, Vice-President of Huawei Sub-Saharan Africa Region, delivered a welcome speech in which he shared his insights that humankind is accelerating towards an intelligent world. Intelligence will open up new opportunities for Africa over the next decade. Huawei is championing an "All Intelligence" strategy as it shares its expertise and experience in the ICT industry and works together with customers and partners in Africa. Huawei Data Storage offers innovative products and solutions that can help customers in a vast range of industries in Africa unleash infinite data value.
Data awakening era: Huawei provides AI-ready data infrastructure
In the AI era, efficient data management and use are crucial for enterprises to stay ahead of the curve. Diego Xiao, Vice-President of Huawei Data Storage Product Line, delivered a keynote speech in which he spoke about Huawei's "1+3+X" reference architecture for AI-ready data infrastructure. This architecture features one data lake, three data pools and X data services. It covers OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage, OceanStor A800 high-performance storage, OceanStor Pacific scale-out storage, OceanProtect appliance, the Omni-Dataverse global file system, which is housed in the DME, and the DataMaster O&M model. This architecture is designed to help enterprises fully unleash the value of their data and facilitate the intelligent upgrade of the digital economy in the southern African region.
Hu Hui, Vice-President of Huawei Scale-Out Storage Domain, delivered a keynote speech emphasising that data, computing power and algorithms are the core elements of large AI models, and that the amount of high-quality data determines the level of AI. Data storage is a key carrier of data and, as such, it plays a critical role in supporting large AI models. As large AI models mature, data centres need to carry more data, posing higher requirements on data storage in terms of capacity, performance and energy consumption. Huawei all-flash scale-out storage activates mass unstructured data and drives the development of new applications in the AI era. It can flexibly handle any workload, increase energy efficiency at any scale and remain reliable at every access point.
Insights from distinguished guests
Jon Tullett, Associate Research Director at IDC, spoke about key trends in the development of IT infrastructure for the digital intelligence era and suggested ways for enterprises to keep ahead of the curve in this era. He highlighted that increasingly, more enterprises are using AI technologies to strengthen their competitive advantages. However, their existing data infrastructure falls short in terms of performance and reliability, hindering further AI development. He concluded that embracing all-flash storage and utilising innovative storage systems can help enterprises build robust data infrastructure to lay a solid foundation for accelerated digital transformation.
Pandelani Munyai, CIO of Transnet Group, Lucas John Omollo, HSC Manager of ICT & Smart City Solution of Konza Technopolis, and Zano Bright Nyati, Senior Manager of Openserve, delivered keynote speeches on digital transformation in the electric power industry, smart city construction in Kenya, and data protection practices in the carrier industry, respectively.
Official launch of the OceanClub Community
Building a community for storage technology applications
At the forum, Leon Xu, Vice-President of Huawei ICT Commercial Business Dept, and multiple partners, jointly announced the launch of OceanClub, a data storage technology community. The community aims to promote application and technology innovation in the data storage industry and strengthen technical knowledge sharing between peers. OceanClub plans to hold more than 100 events in more than 30 countries in 2024.
Four industry technology sessions
In-depth discussions on the evolution of the storage industry
The forum also included four interactive sessions: Data centre infrastructure session, data protection session, commercial market session and IdeaHub CXO roundtable. Customers interested in the latest trends in the development of data centres and the latest solutions for data protection and ransomware protection were invited to actively engage in discussions and share their ideas during these sessions.
Huawei officially released HUAWEI eKitStor Xtreme 300P, an ultra-high-performance disc for data centres, at the commercial market session. The product has a throughput bandwidth of 14.8GB/s and a data processing capability of 3.45 million IOPS, and it is designed to meet large-scale data access requirements. The product also ensures service continuity and data resilience, with an MTBF of 2.5 million hours and four levels of data protection capabilities. HUAWEI eKitStor Xtreme 300P is suitable for most enterprises because it can be used in a wide range of scenarios and is compatible with multiple devices. It can help SMEs unleash the potential of data centres through the Flash Forward project.
In addition, the Huawei IDI Forum featured a 260m exhibition area showcasing Huawei's data storage products and solutions through more than 20 scenario-specific interactive exhibits. The forum was well-received and many attendees left positive feedback about their experiences. The event was a big draw for many customers and sparked active communication and idea sharing among customers.
