Kathy Gibson reports from CeBIT, Hanover – Huawei considers itself as a global company, with about 30% of its revenues currently coming from outside its home market of China.
Zheng Yelai, president of the IT product line at Huawei, told media yesterday that Europe is the second biggest market for the Chinese technology giant, at around 15% of its operations.
In addition, Huawei has established a number of innovation research centres in the US, Japan, Russia and Europe.
At CeBIT this week, Huawei announced a number of strategic partnerships with German technology icons, including Fraunhofer Institute, SAP and Deutsche Telekoms’ T-Systems.
However, in response to queries from media, Yelai acknowledged that breaking into the European market is no mean feat for a Chinese organisation. “We have to work hard to win the trust of our customers and suppliers,” he says.
“But in my experience over the last 10 years, I believe Huawei will succeed for the core reason that it provides competitive products and solutions.”
So how does an ICT product supplier differentiate itself in a market where hardware has become effectively commoditised? According to Yelai, it’s by not running with the pack but developing individual components.
“So, for our server, we take advantage of the architecture to make it simple, with the best performance in the industry. In addition, power consumption is 15% lower and the fault ratio is lower too.
“The reason we are able to achieve performance that our competitors can’t is that if you open a Huawei server you will find the BMC chip for management that was developed by Huawei itself.
“The same goes for storage: previously you had SAN or NAS – but not one storage bank. Traditional storage vendors have products for different markets, all developed in different platforms.
“Huawei storage products, on the other hand, have been developed on a single unified software platform, so we can make the system simpler.
“That’s our slogan for our hardware infrastructure: ‘make it simple’.”
Looking to the future, Yelai says Huawei’s strategy is clear: it will continue to develop servers, storage networking products and wireless solutions.
These are then geared for specific industry vertical markets. The company currently focuses on eight verticals, but this will vary as the market changes.
“For instance we have a lot of advantage in the media and entertainment industries, so we highlight these verticals. We have also found that in transportation sector we are collaborating with all of our communication technologies so also highlight that as a focus industry.”
On the subject of acquisitions, Yelai points out that Huawei tends to acquire companies for their technology rather than for their market share.
As society, business and industry all become more connected, the network is becoming more important than ever. When fast, secure and reliable connectivity is required, companies can’t afford to deal with a slow network.
Swift Liu, president of the switch and enterprise communications product line: products and solutions at Huawei Technologies, points out that the competitive landscape is changing for enterprises.
“Today, enterprises find they need to be closer to their customers, to respond to market changes quickly; to have open business models; and have excellence in operations.”
These factors point to the need for a fast, reliable and scalable network, he says – in fact, to an agile network.
“Huawei’s Agile network is an SDN (software-defined network) but it goes a bit further in that it offers centralised control, network compatibility and an organisation that allows for the creation of a virtual network.”
Central to the Agile network is its fully programmable switch. Where most traditional network controllers are built around ASICs, this one is programmable – so if a customer needs new features or functions they can upgrade their software and not have to change their hardware.
“This protects their investment and makes it quicker to make changes.”
Importantly, Huawei offers a smooth migration path from existing network infrastructures to SDN.
At CeBIT this year, Huawei launched a number of new Agile networking products. These include a 100G campus network, next-generation anti-DDoS and 4K converged telecommunications.
It also unveiled its fully connected DC (data centre) network. This uses software in the storage network that allows storage to be managed from the network controller. “It has been a dream for many years to merge the two networks, and we have achieved it,” says Liu.
The company’s networking products are gaining traction around the world. In 2014, Huawei ranked as the world number three networking supplier, with a 4% market share – it. Its DC switches saw the best growth, at 150%.
The Huawei access router has an 11% market share and ranks number two in EMEA, while the company’s anti-DDoS product ranks in the top five.
