Chinese technology giant Huawei concluded the ‘Industrial Digital Transformation Conference’, in March 2021 where the company emphasized on the need for a value-driven industrial digitalization model that can assist businesses circumnavigate the post-pandemic future.
The tech company held the event online from March 24 to 26 under the theme ‘New Value Together’. In the digital conference almost 50 customers and partners from more than 10 nations and regions discussed their industrial procedures and together discovered the new value of digital transformation in the time beyond the pandemic.
The strength of the robust and revolutionary digital world was prospected from three angles: business, technology, and ecosystems. Huawei shared insights on digital transformation, and announced business strategies, talent programs, and ecosystems that support it. In the two day explained practices that were implemented in recent time in the energy, government, transportation, education, manufacturing, internet service sectors and technological innovation. Huawei showcased the latest developments in the technological segment that encompassed connectivity, cloud and AI.
Huawei stated that it believes all types of organizations should become digital-first to become competitive in an ever growing business environment. With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation businesses are now, faced with the challenge of keeping pace with that evolving technology.
In his speech, Ken Hu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman of Huawei, pointed out that digital transformation is accelerating across industries, and full cloud adoption will occur 1 to 3 years earlier than expected.
“Going digital is no longer just for internet companies. It is expanding to traditional industries, and from the office to the production floor. We’ll keep innovating in technology and scenario-based solutions to help all industries take advantage of this opportunity,” said Hu.
To augment businesses in their innovation voyage, Huawei, so far, has built 13 Open Labs around the world. For example, in Munich and Dubai, the company is working with almost 900 ecosystem partners to incubate different solutions for industrial use cases. Till date, the global tech company has successfully verified more than 60 solutions in areas ranging from smart retail to smart manufacturing. From the technology perspective, Huawei is innovating in areas like smart campuses, deterministic networks, hyper-integrated data centers, smart clouds, and green energy to lay the foundation for an intelligent future.
Value Driven Customer-centric Digitalization
Huawei further underscored the importance of converting ideas into reality. After many years of practice, Huawei has propositioned a value-driven model for global industrial digitalization. Huawei believes that digital transformation should be concentrated on on-the-ground business use cases, which can then be leveraged to create value for customers through constant development.
Principles of Transformation
Peng Zhongyang, board member and President of Enterprise BG, Huawei, focused on the three basic principles that must be utilized during digital transformation.
“First, companies must continue to be customer-centric, which is the starting point of digital transformation,” mentioned Zhongyang. “Secondly, they must seize two key factors: the convergence of technologies and scenarios is the key to digitalization, while cloud is critical to continuous optimization and value creation in the digital era. Thirdly, businesses should focus on customer requirements to build a symbiotic and shared digital ecosystem from three dimensions: scenario exploration, capacity building, and a cooperation model to jointly create new value for industries.”
Customer Cooperation to Create Industry Value
Huawei has committed to working with customers and partners to integrate its core business scenarios with ICT technologies, and fasten industrial digitalization by upgrading via scenario-specific, state-of-the-art solutions. They believe that this is also the key to the digitalization of the industry.
Focus on Finance
The sub theme focusing of finance was based around the topic ‘Technology Empowers Intelligent Finance’. Speakers spoke on various topics of discussion that included ‘Huawei’s FSI Business Outside China: Progress and Strategy’; ‘Accelerating Business Agility Through Cloud Native Infrastructure in Banking’; ‘Banks’ Financial Inclusion Practices’; ‘Together for Financial Inclusion’ and ‘Build a Robotic Infrastructure for RPA’. In the financial world Huawei, through joint innovation with partners, has provided NCBA Bank Kenya, East African sub region is the largest commercial bank, with a new digital core system.
The system facilities inclusive financial services for more than 18 million users in Kenya and neighboring countries, galvanizing the real economy and encouraging sustainable social development. Eric Muriuki Njagi, Director of NCBA Digital Services, commented: ‘Our cooperation with Huawei aims to solve current problems as well as grasp new opportunities brought by future services.’
Augmenting Governance
The panels on the issue of supporting good governance focused on two primary themes ‘Accelerating the Transformation of Taxation Through Digitalization’ and ‘Digital Technologies, Shaping the Future of Smart Customs’.
The broad themes which focused on smarter revenue collection for governments included speakers who gave their deliveries on issues such as ‘Data + Technology: The Catalyst for Tax Transformation’; ‘Huawei Digital Tax Solution Launch — Accelerating the Transformation of Taxation Through Digitalization’; ‘All Flash-Enabled Cloud Data Center: A New Engine for Digital Tax’; ‘How Invoice Digitization Can Enable Digital Economy Development’; ‘New Collection and Services in a Next Generation e-Revenue Authority’; ‘Digitalize Revenue Administration — AI Enhanced Taxpayer Audit’; ‘Digital Transformation of Customs Administration — Driving Intelligence’; ‘Digital Technologies Are Shaping the Future of Smart Customs’; ‘A World-Class Business Environment Powered by Intelligent Customs Supervision’; ‘New, One-Stop Smart Clearance Mode Facilitates Port Modernization’ and ‘Integrated Port Logistics and Clearance: Data-Enabled Intelligence for Smart Port Construction’. The specialist speakers who discussed about smartly digitizing revenue streams for administrations included Zhou Yi National Leader — Customs and Global Trade Northern China Indirect Tax Leader, Deloitte; Sheldon Wang President, Global Customs and Tax Industries, Huawei and Feng Tianfei Chief Product R&D Officer, Powerbridge, among others
Huawei stated that it believes all types of organizations should become digital-first to become competitive in an ever growing business environment. With the pandemic accelerating digital transformation businesses are now, faced with the challenge of keeping pace with that evolving technology.
Technology in Transportation
Dr. Georgia Ayfantopoulou, Research Director Intelligent Infrastructure, Networks, Mobility & Logistics; Deputy Director Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT) of Center for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), took Europe as an example in the transportation sector. Ayfantopoulou communicated the situation of digital transformation of port construction. European Union (EU) ports offer services to a global maritime fleet. For example, Greece is ranked first with a share of 17% of the world fleet in 2020. Seaports and the shipping industry are a vital core component of the EU economy. Nevertheless, they are facing challenges such as structural performance gaps, lack of high-quality infrastructure at ports and other low-performing services. To tackle this, the EU has formulated a strategic agenda for the European ports, emphasizing on maritime infrastructure as part of raising the EU’s global economic competitiveness.
This Green Port Proposal has been innovated jointly between CERTH and Huawei. Dr. Georgia Ayfantopoulou said: “The Green Port project is deeply involved in the transformation process of the ports’ ecosystems: the users of the ports together with the port’s authorities, the cities try to solve problems of accessibility, efficiency, operation optimization and environmental impact. Ports of the future are sustainable, smart, multimodal and interconnected. Technology solutions from partners like Huawei will contribute to efficiently meeting various challenges.”
Enhancing Education
An example of technological innovation was highlighted in the education sector where Soochow University partnered with Huawei to jointly build a ‘Cloud-based Soochow University’ that is digital and intelligent. This project allowed all people, environments, objects, as well as academic and cultural activities in the campus to be digitized and mirrored on the cloud, allowing for digital integrations in teaching, scientific research, and management.
Xiong Sidong, President of the Soochow University, commented in his keynote speech: ‘Soochow University and Huawei have applied cutting-edge technologies such as AI, big data, cloud computing, and IoT in the planning and construction of a cloud-based campus for information exchange and data sharing. Our aim is to shape a new form of university that is built with future technology and integrates reality and virtual interactions.’
At a point in the global juncture where the COVID-19 virus is catalyzing our need to optimize tasks with technology, this event has aptly highlighted some key areas that are essential to cater to the values that businesses and consumers need to rise above in the years past the COVID-19 period.
Evolving Energy
In the energy segment the broad themes of discussion were “Building Secure, Stable, Efficient, and Cost-effective Power Systems” and “Driving Data to Barrel and Building Fully Connected, Intelligent Oil and Gas”. Gao Kunlun, CIGRE Study Committee D2 Regular Member, and Vice President of the Global Energy Interconnection Research Institute, pointed out that in recent years, AI is gradually being applied in many fields, such as equipment maintenance, power grid operation, and customer service in the energy industry. Even though this effectively improves the efficiency and benefits of the power grid it also highlights technical limitations. With the progress of AI theories and technologies, AI-powered electric power systems are now capable of knowledge learning and independent decision-making optimization in complex environments, playing an integral role in essential services such as autonomous power generation and autonomous scheduling of power grids.
Huawei’s conference could not be more timely. At a point in the global juncture where the COVID-19 virus is catalyzing our need to optimize tasks with technology, this event has aptly highlighted some key areas that are essential to cater to the values that businesses and consumers need to rise above in the years past the COVID-19 period. There will always be new obstacles and doubts in the post-pandemic era. However, Huawei has committed to be more open and continue to work with their 30,000 global partners to support each other’s fortes and help overcome new barriers. This may just be the beginning of many such global concerted efforts from the major tech players to match value with the needs of the hour.
