Chinese multinational Huawei has announced grand plans for its cloud computing arm. In short, it wants to form a global “cloud alliance” with telco partners around the world. This will allow for greater collaboration on the delivery of cloud solutions for international enterprises, similar to how airline alliances operate today.
CEO Guo Ping outlined his company’s vision today at the annual Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai. The basic idea is to build a global cloud network with different telco partners that would allow companies to better circumnavigate the world’s different infrastructure, regulatory and data transportation requirements.
Ping said that the business model Huawei envisions was inspired by the world’s airline alliances such as SkyTeam, Star Alliance and Oneworld.
“It is impossible for one or two companies to meet all these requirements. That is why we think, just like the airline alliance, there will be a cloud alliance that will be comprised of members from different countries so that all together they can provide global services to their customers.”
In contrast to past keynotes, Ping also outlined the company’s commitment to public cloud investment. Huawei plans to expand its first-party hybrid cloud offerings to both governments and enterprises.
Ping said that Huawei’s commitment to cloud technologies would see it become one of the world’s “five clouds”, a scenario he compared to the “five computers” predicted by IBM founder Thomas Watson.
“We hope that in the future customers will be able to ask for Huawei cloud and be able to connect to the entire world.”
It’s already off to a good start – according to Ping, around half of the world’s population already interacts with Huawei networks in some way.
Lifehacker attended Huawei Connect 2017 as a guest of Huawei.
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