Huawei Cloud Goes Live in Egypt
May 23, 2024
[Cairo, Egypt, May 21, 2024] Huawei launched a cloud Region in Egypt today, 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, made at the Huawei Cloud Summit Egypt 2024, 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%.
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.
Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service
"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 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 800 e-government projects, six major banks in China, 90% of the top 50 e-commerce enterprises, and 90% of the top 30 automakers..
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 the 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 upgrade 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 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 use of cloud. A single startup can apply for cloud credits worth up to $150,000.
Cloud and AI technologies boosts productivity and fuels progress. At this Summit, William Dong, President of Huawei Cloud Marketing, shared Huawei Cloud's philosophy of applying technologies for the greater good. This includes upskilling teachers and students through the " Technology-enabled Open School Systems for All" project in countries like Egypt, building an AI assistant to help identify patients with rare diseases, and protecting one of the largest coral reefs in the world, the Mauritius coral reef. William stated, "Digital and AI technologies are making a positive impact on our lives, the environment, and sustainability. We stay committed to 'Cloud for Good', and we never stop doing it better." At the end of his speech, he proposed the initiative of joint efforts with more partners and customers in Egypt from industries such as agriculture, education, healthcare, environment, water, and cultural heritage, to make a tech-enabled future more accessible to the local people.