New cloud data centre in Riyadh will serve the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa
Huawei has launched its Cloud Riyadh Region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and said it plans to help Chinese enterprises enter the kingdom through local partnerships.
The new region is located in Riyadh and, by deploying in a 3AZ (availability zone) disaster recovery architecture, the vendor said it will provide highly available and secure cloud services. In addition, the region can provide full-stack cloud services and will store data locally in line with local data regulations.
The company will also launch 68 cloud services in three categories – data, AI, and cloud native. stc, Zain, and Mobily will all connect to the new region. Huawei said it will support government services for the kingdom and allow for AI applications and language models in Arabic.
Speaking at the Huawei Cloud Summit Saudi Arabia, country CEO Eric Yang referred to the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 technology goals. “It has been a great journey for us in Saudi Arabia for the last 20 years. Huawei is a constructor for an intelligent society, contributor to a thriving economy, and cultivator for a prosperous talent ecosystem,” he said.
“Towards 2030, we will stay dedicated to continuously providing ubiquitous connectivity, green energy, pervasive cloud computing and AI capabilities for Saudi Arabia to unlock unlimited opportunities of the new digital era,” he added.
“Saudi Arabia Region will be our focus in serving the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa, providing innovative, reliable, secure, and sustainable cloud services,” said Huawei Cloud global marketing and sales service president Jacqueline Shi (pictured).
Huawei Cloud now has six international regions outside China in Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Chile. It also announced plans for an Indonesian region in late 2022.
Expanding ties in Saudi
Huawei opened its regional headquarters in the Saudi capital this year. At the event, the vendor also announced that Huawei Cloud will train 200,000 developers in Saudi Arabia over the next five years. These are big numbers if achieved given the kingdom’s fourth largest city Medina only has around 9,000 tech professionals in the city.
It will also build joint solutions with 1,000 local partners and launch the Huawei Cloud Startup Program “to help 2,000 startups grow”. Huawei also launched a new program to connect Chinese and Saudi enterprises, which will include solutions to help Chinese enterprises enter Saudi Arabia.
“Huawei is a proud partner in our country’s technological progress having worked with the ministry, service providers, enterprises and universities in various collective efforts towards digital transformation,” said Ministry of Communications and Information Technology deputy minister Haitham bin Abdul Rahman Al-Ohali.
Huawei has been working with Saudi operators to build telecommunications networks and roll out 5G since entering the market in 2002. Revenue from the vendor’s cloud business reached 45.3 billion yuan ($5.98bn) in 2022 and another 24.1 billion yuan in the first half of this year, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
In February, Huawei said it would invest $400 million in the Saudi Arabia cloud region over the next five years, according to Reuters. Huawei ranked fifth in the global cloud services market in the first quarter, with a market share of 2.4%, although it was the second-largest vendor in mainland China, according to research consultancy Canalys.
In the Middle East, Huawei has signed up more than 200 government-related clients, over 30 from the financial services industry and over 150 internet firms as cloud service clients, according to the SCMP.
At MWC Barcelona Huawei signed a cloud and core infrastructure collaboration with Saudi incumbent stc to work on building a telco Cloud and an autonomous driving network. At the same time, stc and Huawei agreed to strengthen their cooperation in areas such as technology research, technology testing, commercial deployment and publicity, including 50G PON, FTTR, 400G/800G and ultra-high speed 1.2Tbps WDM, OXC, Alps-WDM, plus form a joint team to innovate in F5.5G [fixed].