Johannesburg, 12 Dec 2022
Huawei held a partner event with one of its partners, First Distribution, in Kyalami, Johannesburg at which it highlighted the benefits of partnering with Huawei Cloud, how it interacts with its partners and the types of solutions that partners can take advantage of.
Huawei Cloud South Africa MD Jay Zhou initiated proceedings by providing a little history of Huawei Cloud in South Africa. “We launched our first data centre in South Africa in 2019 and have since invested in data centres globally as well as locally. Last year, we launched a new strategy in SA, everything as a service, because we believe that the fundamentals of a cloud business is as a service.”
Together with its partners, Huawei Cloud is able to provide an AI platform, a data platform and DevOps to enable its partners in South Africa, such as First Distribution, to develop their own products. Zhou says: “We have also recently launched a developers’ competition in South Africa, which will be held annually going forward.”
First Distribution’s reseller partners will now be able to offer their customers a range of Huawei Cloud services, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS), including storage, compute, network, database, container, big data and artificial intelligence, says Michael de Bruin, Huawei Brand Manager at First Distribution.
“Our most important strategy in South Africa is ‘partner first’. We only sell Huawei Cloud infrastructure and services and don’t compete with our partners. We’re currently doubling our revenue growth in South Africa, as well as the number of local partners. Globally our revenue was at $8 billion last year, with a goal of achieving $30 billion in revenue by 2025.”
First Distribution has been Huawei Cloud’s strategy partner since April this year. The aim – as it is with all Huawei Cloud partnerships – is to collaborate, capitalising on each partner’s strengths, to create growth and add value for both parties.
First Distribution’s reach in South Africa and SADC is one of the reasons Huawei chose to partner with the company. Of the distributor’s 4 000 resellers, more than 1 000 are already signed up as cloud partners, so there is great synergy and value alignment between the two companies, says De Bruin.
Tsailou Lin, director of ecosystem development at Huawei Cloud South Africa, says the business’s biggest strength lies in its investment in research and development, which places it just shy of Google in terms of investment spend.
“Our aim is to bring digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully digital world. By providing everything as a service and a complete solution offering and connecting all of these into the IOT space, we can offer our partners a single solution that’s integrated end-to-end.”
Even though Huawei Cloud is the youngest cloud, it’s the fastest growing cloud, appearing in China’s top two and the top five globally. “We’re the first hyperscaler to have a presence on the African continent, with data centres in Midrand and Centurion, with more slated for Africa by 2025.”
In South Africa, Huawei Cloud has seen an 80% increase in partners, all of whom are benefiting from the partner first ethos. “We don’t touch our partners’ customers. We work with our partners to understand where they are and how we can help them to grow. We provide them with the technology, marketing resources, technical support from a local and global team, training and certification and a flexible commercial model to help them succeed. We also help the partner to put all of the components together into a solution that works for them.”
She emphasises that Huawei Cloud’s infrastructure has more than 100 security and compliance certifications globally, so partners can rest assured their data is secure.
First Distribution, through its Cloud Catalyst Program, will take its partners on the Huawei Cloud Journey, helping them to become value-added Huawei Cloud Partner, explains De Bruin.
Heelesh Heera, business development manager for Huawei Cloud South Africa, continues the discussion around everything as a service, saying the business offers 220 cloud services globally across 18 categories, enabling it to bring everything together to form holistic solutions to solve business problems.
He points out that partners see a marked improvement in performance of up to 25% and a cost saving of 20%-30% when running on Huawei Cloud compared to other hyperscalers.
“Let First Distribution and Huawei Cloud be your first option when implementing your cloud strategy.”
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