Calvin Huang, e-commerce product and solution architect specialist at Huawei Cloud.

Gartner has recently indicated that the cloud has reached the point of being an indispensable part of doing business, and that with public cloud, more and more firms are unlocking services that should give them the edge over their competitors.

The recent growth of so-called “industry clouds” is a clear demonstration that this technology can now be leveraged by organisations in a bespoke form, specifically developed for individual sector verticals.

According to Calvin Huang, Solution Architect Manager, at Huawei Cloud South Africa, the versatility of the cloud today is such that it lends itself to specific use-case scenarios within a variety of industry verticals. Huawei itself has a multitude of these “industry clouds”.

A good example is in the e-commerce sector, which has rapidly accelerated in the post-Covid era. This now presents significant business opportunities for both born-in-the-cloud startups and traditional retailers moving online.

“Modern e-commerce businesses need to enable two-way interactions, they must be dynamic and able to scale, and they must put themselves in a position to harness technologies such as big data analytics, artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality to stay competitive and relevant,” Huang says.

“E-commerce challenges such as flexibility, cost and future-proofing can be overcome by working with the right technology partner, one that offers scalable infrastructure, transparent pricing and in-country support.”

The public cloud, in particular, offers key advantages for e-commerce, Huang notes. The public cloud delivers the stability and scalability to handle sudden traffic surges, enhance security, overcome a poor user experience and support data analysis for forecasting and personalisation.

“Huawei’s e-commerce industry cloud offers advantages such as scalability during peak loads, an agile and secure development environment, and performance across national borders. Furthermore, Huawei has designed an end-to-end suite of solutions and services that makes it a one-stop shop for e-commerce business development.

“We offer advanced services, taking customers from a static site through to a site that can support millions of customers, 3D search, animated characters and big data analytics for customer analysis and forecasting, all while conforming to international security and compliance best practices.”

Another key vertical market is that of media and entertainment, where streaming services and content platforms are grappling with the multi-pronged challenges of managing massive volumes of content securely, while also adapting to changing consumer demands.

“There are challenges around both the technology and user experience, Huang says. “Streamed media needs a stable connection and sufficient bandwidth, while content providers must focus on content delivery latency and optimising the user experience. It’s also necessary to have scalable infrastructure, capable of handling massive numbers of concurrent users without degradation in performance.”

To help overcome these challenges, media companies need advanced, secure, scalable and cost-effective media infrastructure solutions, like those delivered by Huawei Cloud.

This encompasses everything from networking infrastructure and high-speed content transmission, to optical transmission systems, IP networks and wireless solutions. “Huawei’s innovations here also include artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition and content moderation technology, to help streamers ensure legal content streaming, and the ‘Digital Human’ intelligent virtual human for advertising and branding.”

Education also remains a critical vertical sector, one where ICT will play a fundamental role in the future, which is why digital transformation is so vital in this arena, adds Huang, noting that a key first step towards such digital transformation lies in overcoming data silos and building data lakes and data warehouses in the cloud.

“Among the challenges to be overcome are issues around cyber and data security; digital transformation and the alignment of IT and business; a lack of resources; governance, compliance and risk management; and connectivity and ageing infrastructure.”

“The cloud not only eliminates the challenge of siloed departments and data, but education institutions can build on their cloud foundation to add Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.”

Huang explains that Huawei has various solutions within this vertical, such as smart campus, CCTV and big data solutions. Another solution is U-Learning with AI, which includes advanced features such as eye movement monitoring, to ensure that students writing exams remotely aren’t cheating.

“The secure and trusted Huawei Cloud eliminates information silos between data, devices and partners, enabling institutions to share, collaborate and innovate more easily. Services such as Video on Demand (VOD) and Live Broadcast allow students to learn anytime, anywhere. The cloud here is not only transformative, but also helps to democratise access to education, while making this access more resilient.”

“A final crucial vertical market serviced by Huawei’s industry clouds is the fintech arena, where such organisations face challenges in achieving the maturity and scale they need to become significant players in future banking ecosystems.” Key challenges in the fintech market segment include achieving scale and profitability, navigating an uncertain environment, customer acquisition, and building robust governance, compliance and security across multiple countries.

“Regardless of the model chosen, cloud computing addresses these challenges. Huawei Cloud delivers scalability, resource efficiency and finance sector-specific solutions that are fully secure and compliant. With over 120 security certifications from around the world, Huawei also offer guidelines and best practice recommendations around end-to-end cloud security.”

Huawei recently announced its “Non-Stop Banking” initiative for Africa, to facilitate a digital future of “non-stop” services, “non-stop” development, and “non-stop” innovation.

“With extensive experience in addressing banking and fintech needs, and supporting their stringent security and compliance requirements, Huawei Cloud has the distinction of being far more than an expert cloud service provider: the company is also a strategic business partner, not only for its fintech clients, but equally so for the customers it supports in other industry verticals,” concludes Huang.

Connect with Huawei Cloud:

https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/en-us/

huaweicloudsa@huawei.com