Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 Launched for the Middle East and Central Asia, Offering a Superior Hybrid Cloud in the AI Era
Oct 15, 2024
[Dubai, UAE, October 15, 2024] At the Huawei Cloud Summit of GITEX Global 2024, Hu Yuhai, Vice President of Huawei Hybrid Cloud, announced the release of Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5, the Huawei's latest hybrid cloud version, for the Middle East and Central Asia. Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 aims to create a superior hybrid cloud in the AI era to accelerate industrial intelligence. The Huawei Cloud Stack Forum for Middle East was also held at GITEX Global 2024. At the forum, the Huawei Hybrid Cloud Pioneer Program for Middle East and Central Asia and the first national education cloud for Pakistan were launched.
Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 Unveiled: A Leap to New Horizons Across the Middle East and Central Asia
Many countries in the Middle East and Central Asia are increasingly leveraging the digital economy to boost their competitiveness. Key sectors, such as government, oil and gas, finance, and telecommunications, are embracing AI, cloud native, and big data technologies to spur innovation in their core services. In response to this demand, Hu Yuhai, Vice President of Huawei Hybrid Cloud, unveiled Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5, the latest version, at the Huawei Cloud Summit. He also introduced some new cutting-edge technologies and solutions in this new version, including the Seamless Cloud OS Upgrade, Security Anti-Ransomware Solution, Mainframe-to-Cloud Solution, and Hybrid Cloud for Large AI Models. He said, "Huawei Cloud Stack provides a superior hybrid cloud for government and enterprise customers in the Middle East and Central Asia through more powerful cloud infrastructure, more diverse cloud services, and more extensive industry solutions. Currently, Huawei Cloud Stack provides more than 120 on-premises cloud services and 50 industry scenario-specific solutions. In the future, we will continue to invest in the hybrid cloud market and work with customers and partners to leap to new horizons and accelerate industrial intelligence. "
Hu Yuhai, Vice President of Huawei Hybrid Cloud
More Powerful Cloud Infrastructure
Huawei Cloud Stack has been stepping up efforts to innovate core technologies, striving to provide customers with an infrastructure platform excelling in reliability, performance, and resource utilization. The new version introduces two major updates:
· Seamless cloud OS upgrade: Upgrading large-scale clusters is typically a time-consuming process for government and enterprise customers. To help customers address this challenge, Huawei Cloud Stack, based on a modular hypervisor architecture, provides in-place, seamless OS upgrades. This technology has been used by a financial customer, reducing the upgrade time for a cluster with 1,200 nodes from 21 days to 5 hours.
· Ransomware defense: In response to ransomware attacks, Huawei Cloud Stack offers a comprehensive protection plan, covering 100% of known ransomware and utilizing AI for intelligent detection of unknown ransomware. It also leverages collaboration among server, network, and storage backups for more thorough defense.
More Diverse Cloud Services
Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 provides more than 120 cloud services, including big data, database, blockchain, AI, and other cutting-edge services. In the new version, GaussDB has been upgraded in terms of hybrid transaction/analytical processing (HTAP), data compression, and compatibility, so it can provide better support for customers' core services. Huawei Cloud Stack leverages Pangu Models 5.0, which was recently released, to deploy large AI model capabilities on the hybrid cloud, helping enterprises build their own custom large AI models in one stop. From the hardware layer to the software layer and then to the model layer, it provides comprehensive AI production capabilities, significantly simplifying the adoption of large AI models.
More Extensive Industry Solutions
Drawing on extensive industry expertise, Huawei Cloud Stack 8.5 offers over 50 scenario-specific solutions across six major sectors. The solutions include the Mainframe-to-Cloud Solution for the finance sector, National Government Cloud, and cloud transformation of carriers' in-house workloads. These solutions are designed to expedite digital transformation and promote intelligent upgrade. This year, Huawei established a mainframe modernization business unit (BU), integrating core R&D resources, promoting systematic innovation, and addressing the challenges of moving core services from mainframes to the cloud. They are dedicated to creating highly available, easy-to-maintain, and more agile open new core systems for customers.
According to the latest survey conducted by Omdia, a world-renowned consultancy firm, Huawei Cloud has become a key player in the hybrid cloud market of the Middle East. The survey placed Huawei Cloud Stack in the leadership group for categories such as infrastructure, cloud architecture, and AI capabilities. Huawei Cloud Stack achieved top ranking for being proactive in optimizing cloud service experience, for suitability in training AI workloads, and for cloud service reliability. Huawei Cloud Stack is highly recognized by many customers. Omdia predicts that government organizations and enterprises across the Middle East will be eager for rapid private cloud and hybrid cloud adoption. Huawei Cloud Stack's leading solutions and compliance with local regulations will drive further adoption.
Joining Hands with Customers in the Middle East and Central Asia to Dive into Cloud Faster
Huawei Cloud Stack looks to drive more government and enterprise clients in the Middle East and Central Asia to dive into cloud faster. They have partnered with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, Omantel, ChinaSoft International, iSoftStone, CloudHost, and TecBrix to launch the Huawei Hybrid Cloud Pioneer Program for the Middle East and Central Asia. This initiative aims to join forces with digital pioneers in government and enterprise customers around the world to foster industry innovation and achieve mutual success. The program focuses on three key leaps:
· 10+ scenario leaps: Huawei Cloud Stack plans to continue to work with customers and partners to create over 10 scenario-specific benchmarks centered around the fields like data governance, disaster recovery, cloud security, and AI and drive the modernization of applications.
· 30+ migration leaps: Huawei Cloud Stack will offer free virtualization migration tools, covering 500+ mainstream operating systems. They will provide exclusive business incentives for the first 50 customers migrating to Huawei Cloud Stack.
· 50+ industry leaps: Huawei Cloud Stack will put more efforts in marketing to help customers build industry influence and accelerate industry adoption. They will also help customers establish industry benchmarks. Huawei will collaborate with customers on white papers to showcase industry-leading practices and enrich industry-specific knowledge bases.
Launch Ceremony of Hybrid Cloud Pioneer Program for the Middle East and Central Asia
At the event, the HEC of Pakistan launched their national education cloud, powered by a unified cloud platform and over 80 innovative cloud services from Huawei Cloud Stack. The cloud is designed to provide broader, higher-quality, and more equitable digital education services for over 450 higher education institutions and 4 million students, propelling Pakistan towards becoming a world-class hub for education research and development.
Launch of the National Education Cloud by HEC of Pakistan Together with Huawei Cloud
In his speech, Alan Qi, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, stated, "Huawei Cloud Stack has always been focused on customer needs. By closely aligning with the actual needs of regional customers, we provide efficient and reliable hybrid cloud services, promoting the intelligent upgrade and innovative development of regional companies."
Alan Qi, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia
Huawei Cloud Stack is committed to helping government and enterprise customers move to, use, and manage the cloud with ease. Looking ahead, Huawei is dedicated to innovating, enriching, and enhancing cloud services, and to continuously iterating industry-specific solutions to drive more efficient, secure, and intelligent digital transformation of global customers.