Themed “Unleash Digital with Everything as a Service”, the second Huawei Cloud Summit Middle East & Africa kicked off in Dubai on March 21. The event brought together over 300 government officers, cloud native industry experts, and customer representatives from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, with the aim of exploring how to make the best out of cloud and the vital role of cloud in boosting digital economy.

At the event, H.E. Zhang Yiming, the Chinese Ambassador to UAE, gave a keynote speech on the significance of cloud computing on digital economy. “China is poised to partner with the UAE and countries in the Middle East and Africa in their digital cloud journey. Together, we will invigorate the industry with innovation, expand pilot projects with partnerships, and promote technical advances with young minds. Together, we will achieve technology and industry development centered on cloud computing, and pave the way for digital transformation and digital enablement,” said Mr. Zhang.

Jacqueline Shi, President of Huawei Cloud Global Marketing and Sales Service, delivered an opening speech. She shared the latest progress of Huawei Cloud in the Middle East, and stated Huawei Cloud’s stance on paving the way to bigger success for local customers and partners, as well as the companies that want to run businesses there. “In 2020, Huawei Cloud established its business departments in the Middle East. This year, we are launching the Saudi Arabia Region. We keep developing. We keep going digital. And we want to share our latest technologies and proven digitalization experience to you. We are always ready to serve you best.” said Ms. Shi.

Also at this Summit, Frank Dai, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, delivered a keynote speech “Unleash Digital with Everything as a Service”. In his speech, Mr. Dai shared the digital transformation trends in the Middle East, and how Huawei Cloud can pave the way to digital success by providing technical innovations, proven expertise, and ecosystem support. He said that, “It has become a consensus that the cloud is the best way to accelerate digitalization. Our responsibility is to help enterprises go cloud, use cloud, and manage cloud better, so we can better deal with challenges such as data security, ROI optimization, and new technology application.”

To cultivate local talent and support startups with high potential, Huawei Cloud launched the Huawei Cloud Startup Program 2023 for the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Joining the launch ceremony were representatives from the UAE Ministry of Economy, Dinarak (a licensed payment services provider from Jordan), Ignite (a VC firm from Pakistan), and Eyon TV (a startup representative from Kuwait). Through three key initiatives — innovative cloud platform, entrepreneurship enablement, and business resources — Huawei Cloud will provide lifecycle support for startups in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Huawei Cloud is committed to building a global startup ecosystem to empower 1,000 local startups to innovate and grow on Huawei Cloud in the next three years.

Huawei Cloud is poised to become part of the growth engine for the local economy. Huawei Cloud launched the UAE Region in 2021, providing a seamless cloud experience to local users. An investment commitment of $400 million USD was announced for the next 5 years to build a cloud Region in Saudi Arabia, extending quality, secure cloud services to local customers for them to stay competitive.

In recent years, the Middle East has been a major destination for business opportunities for many Chinese enterprises. Huawei Cloud’s “Go Cloud, Go Global” program helps Chinese enterprises expand into the Middle East. In this Summit, Huawei Cloud invited more than 50 decision-makers from over 40 Chinese enterprises for business exchanges with local organizations in Saudi Arabia and UAE. These visits are the channels for Chinese enterprises to understand better the local policy support as well as the local business environment and development.

Huawei Cloud aims to build a cloud foundation for an intelligent world with Everything as a Service. Looking ahead, Huawei Cloud will continue to expand its global cloud infrastructure and provide customers, partners, and developers with stable, secure, and sustainable cloud services.