During the fourth annual Huawei Connect conference, a global industry event organised by Huawei, the company reaffirmed its commitment and plans to drive digital transformation on a global scale. Huawei’s Deputy Chairman, Ken Hu, called for individuals and organisations to join Huawei in addressing issues related to healthcare, education, development and the environment, with the ambition of using its TECH4ALL platform to help another 500 million people benefit from digital technology in the next five years.
Huawei Connect 2019 was held under the theme of ‘Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent World’, and saw industry peers gather from September 18-20 to discuss some of the sector’s biggest topics. These included digital development, artificial intelligence (AI), and the expansion of cloud services in a connected world.
The conference comes at a time when spending on digital transformation in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa region is predicted to cross the $25 billion mark this year – according to IDC –as more organisations experiment with technologies to spur innovation and boost customer experience.
“Digital technology is reshaping the world,” said Ken Hu, Huawei’s Deputy Chairman. “We want it to benefit everyone and we want digital inclusion for all. We want to protect vulnerable groups and make ordinary people extraordinary. This is the unique value of technology. Digital inclusion will need the joint efforts of businesses, governments, and society at large. Currently, we have just made the first step. We welcome more people and organisations to join us.”
During the event, Huawei announced several new AI and cloud solutions that will contribute to the company’s vision for digital inclusion, and help its customers and partners in the Middle East and beyond to embrace digital transformation.
The event also saw several senior representatives from Huawei and its partners deliver keynote speeches, including Hou Jinlong, President of Cloud and AI Products and Services at Huawei; Dr. Helmut Michael Ma, President of Intelligent Computing Business Dept at Huawei; Patrick Zhang, CTO of Cloud and AI Products and Services at Huawei; Jack Jia, General Manager of EI Product Department – Cloud BU, Huawei; Bazmi R. Husain, CTO of ABB; Li Jianhang, COO of Tongfang, and Liu Wenhuan, Chairman of Wuhan Deepin Technology.
Huawei announces new strategy and releases world’s fastest AI training cluster
During the event, Huawei announced its latest strategy for the computing market, which will focus on four key areas: architecture innovation; investment in all-scenario processors; clear business boundaries, and building an open ecosystem. The latter will see Huawei invest US$1.5 billion in its developer program with the aim to expand support to five million developers, enabling worldwide partners to develop the next generation of intelligent applications and solutions.
The newly-released Atlas 900, the world’s fastest AI training cluster, builds upon the technical strengths that Huawei has developed over the last decade. A powerhouse of AI computing, Atlas 900 combines the power of thousands of Ascend processors and will bring new possibilities to different fields of scientific research and business innovation – anything from astronomy, weather forecasting, autonomous driving, to oil exploration.
Ascend-based Atlas series adds to Huawei’s full-stack, all-scenario AI solutions
Huawei launched its latest Atlas series of products and 43 cloud services based on Ascend processors with powerful computing capabilities. Through these services, Huawei aims to provide superior computing power to make cloud computing and intelligence available to everyone. The new services are available to unleash outstanding computing power and enable inclusive AI.
The Atlas 900 AI cluster, Atlas 300 AI training card, and Atlas 800 AI training server are among the products to have attained the pinnacle of computing power across the globe. The services launched are built on Ascend 910 and Ascend 310, and tailored to scenarios such as AI data inference, AI data training, image processing, knowledge computing, and autonomous driving training. As a result of continuous innovation, Huawei Cloud now offers high-performance and cost-effective AI services to a wide range of industries for inclusive AI for all.
Intelligent product strategy and new +AI products unveiled
Huawei also unveiled its next-generation intelligent product strategy and new + AI products for the enterprise market. The increasing scale of interconnectivity and maturing intelligent technologies are bringing disruptive changes to enterprises around the world. By adding AI capabilities to the next-generation of ICT products, Huawei strives to constantly lead innovation and help customers address a new round of digital transformation challenges to achieve business success.
Its latest solutions include a three-layer AI architecture based on the Engine AI Turbo product series, the iMaster NCE autonomous driving network management and control system, and the industry’s first iMaster NAIE network AI platform. In addition, Huawei also released a new-generation OceanStor Dorado intelligent all-flash storage based on Kunpeng and Ascend processors, Huawei OptiXtrans DC908, the industry’s first intelligent data center interconnect (DCI) product, and more.
Huawei announces GaussDB Golden Seeds Development Program for academia
During its presentations on Empowering Converged Data Infrastructure with Kunpeng, Huawei proposed three intelligent solutions for converged data infrastructure powered by Ascend and Kunpeng processors: data lakes, Storage-computing synergy and data edges. Huawei and industry partners also announced the establishment of a Database Industry Working Group based on the Kunpeng Intelligent Data Industry Alliance. The group will launch the GaussDB Golden Seeds Development Program for Academia to promote the database industry ecosystem.
Huawei reveals Intelligent Campus Ecosystem Plan, collaborating with the industry to win a trillion-yuan market
Huawei introduced its Intelligent Campus Ecosystem Plan and the intelligent HiCampus solution jointly developed with partners for enterprise customers. The announcement came during an intelligent campus summit themed around bringing digital to every campus for pervasive intelligence.
To address the needs of this fast-growing market, Huawei has worked with its partners to develop HiCampus, an integrated intelligent campus solution based on the Huawei Horizon Digital Platform. The platform is developed based on Huawei’s extensive experience of campus digital transformation. It is “fully connected, converged, and open”, which helps customers and partners deliver rapid service innovation.
Huawei releases “Thinking Ahead About AI Security and Privacy Protection” white paper
Huawei released the “Thinking Ahead About AI Security and Privacy Protection” white paper, which outlines the company’s perspective and practices in AI security, privacy issues and related solutions, and proposes a shared responsibility model for AI security and privacy protection governance. Sean Yang, Director of Huawei’s Global Cyber Security and Privacy Office, introduced the white paper at a summit focused on building a comprehensive AI security and privacy protection system.
In the white paper, Huawei has defined seven governance objectives on security and privacy: system security and controllability, transparency and traceability, privacy protection, fairness, data management, competence, and deployment objective assurance. In addition, the white paper introduces Huawei’s security and privacy protection governance practices. AI products and applications are part of a comprehensive ecosystem and encompass a wide range of market participants. Due to the difficulty for any individual party to address complex AI security and privacy threats and risks alone, Huawei proposes a shared responsibility model for AI security and privacy protection governance, with accountability across five roles that must work together for the healthy development of AI: consumers/customers, application developers, deployers, full-stack solution providers, and data collectors.
Huawei Releases Developer Program 2.0 for Developer Ecosystem Construction
Huawei announced an investment of USD 1.5 billion over the next 5 years as part of its Developer Program 2.0, with the goal of partnering with enterprises and individual developers to build the computing industry ecosystem. The leading ICT solutions provider also unveiled the Kunpeng Developer Kit and ModelArts 2.0 AI development platform for software development on the Huawei Kunpeng and Ascend computing platforms.
Developer Program 1.0, launched by Huawei in 2015, has 1.3 million registered individual developers and works with over 14,000 enterprise developers to innovate products and solutions to create value for customers. Developer Program 2.0 will focus on building an open computing industry ecosystem based on Kunpeng + Ascend computing processors; establishing an all-round enablement system; promoting the development of industry standards, specifications, demonstration sites, and technical certification system; building industry-specific application ecosystems and region-specific industry ecosystems, and sharing Kunpeng and Ascend computing power, making it available to every developer.
