Huawei recently launched a Cloud Region in Egypt, making it the first company to establish a public Cloud in the region. The Cairo Region will deliver Huawei Cloud’s intelligent and innovative capabilities and serve as a Hub for countries in Northern Africa.
The announcement at the Huawei Cloud Summit 2024 in Cairo adds to Huawei Cloud’s global presence of 93 availability zones in 33 regions.
Huawei Cloud also announced its new Arabic Large Language Model (LLM), an important step in supporting companies in the region with the digital transformation of vertical industries. The automatic speech recognition (ASR) service supports functions covering over 20 Arabic-speaking countries, with an accuracy rate reaching 96%.
Dr. Amr Talaat, Egypt’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said: “Cloud computing technologies have become a key pillar of the digital infrastructure in all developed countries, given the increasing importance of data and its steady expansion. Egypt first launched a cloud computing policy through the Supreme Council of Digital Society, acknowledging the importance of cloud computing technology and its economic and technological advantages. This enables government entities to avoid wasting computing resources and allows their computing products flexibility in using more resources without long-term planning.”
Zhang Chaoyang, Minister of the Chinese embassy in Egypt, said, “We are glad to see that Huawei, as one of the leading global ICT and digital technology companies, has proactively integrated into the local digital innovation ecosystem since it started business in Egypt in 2000. Huawei has also played an active role in promoting the development of the local communications industry, cultivating young digital talent, and fulfilling its corporate social responsibilities.”
Speaking at the Summit, Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, said Huawei Cloud will also provide, in addition to LLM, capabilities such as artificial intelligence and databases, in support of Egypt Vision 2030.
“From today, everyone can start the digitization journey on Huawei Cloud. With our unique capabilities across chipset, AI computing framework, and training platform, we believe we can help the country build its data sovereignty and own large language models, which are essential to protecting and passing on the country’s history, culture, and knowledge,” Shi said.
Shi added: “When we combine industry know-how with technology, that’s the way to truly help the industry make the most of the Cloud. This is a shared mindset of our team. We believe each industry should have its own specific LLMs.” Currently, Huawei Cloud serves over 500 financial customers, 800 e-government projects, 120 carriers, and the top 30 automakers worldwide.
Mark Chen, President of Huawei Cloud’s Global Solution Sales Department, unveiled the CHANGE architecture at the event. The architecture features a new cloud native infrastructure, a comprehensive cloud technology platform (AI), leading solutions for various industry scenarios, efficient and comprehensive professional services and expert consulting services, which can provide better, more efficient and valuable services for customers in finance, government affairs, e-commerce, media, and various other industries.
“We believe this is the best practice architecture for digital transformation today. Digital transformation is a complex systematic project, and enterprises need to respond to industry transformation and upgrading challenges with systematic thinking and innovative architectures,” Chen said.
At the Summit, Huawei additionally announced that it will invest US$300 million over five years to develop the new Egypt Region. Funds will go to over 200 cloud services including AI platforms, data platforms, and development platforms. To nurture a thriving ecosystem, Huawei will support 200 local software partners, empower 1,300 channel partners, and eventually build a prosperous local software and application ecosystem. Over the next five years, Huawei will train 10,000 local developers and educate 100,000 digital professionals in the region, to drive intelligent transformation.
Huawei Cloud also announced at the Summit upgrades to its startup program in Egypt, including an advanced cloud platform, training programs, and business resources. The Huawei Cloud Startup Program assigns dedicated teams to advise on startups’ cloud adoption and subsidizes their cloud consumption. A single startup can apply for cloud credits worth up to $150,000.
