With 170,000 employees, $46B in 2014 revenue and operations in 170 countries, Huawei’s ICT transformation strategy is based upon providing enterprise, carriers and developers with open, yet integrated, end-to-end network, cloud computing, big data and developer-centric platform solutions.
Dressed casually in a black Huawei Developers Congress 2015 T-shirt, Patrick Zhang, Huawei Technologies’ new president of products and solutions, who is responsible for integrating product solutions across seven business units, shared via a translator, his views about Huawei’s ICT transformation strategy to open up development capabilities in basic networks, communications collaboration, mobile security and IT infrastructure so that developers can bypass traditional barriers and focus on ICT innovation.
Zhang joined Huawei in 1992 and most recently served as president of the enterprise IT products and solutions business unit, which surpassed $3.1 billion in revenue, a 27% increase over 2013. According to Richard Fichera, Computer World UK, Zhang is uniquely qualified to integrate Huawei’s expansive line of fixed and mobile broadband access, core network, information technology and carrier software products into a singular ICT transformation strategy, customized to customer vertical market needs.
After attending the Huawei Developers Congress, I toured Huawei’s carrier showroom and enterprise showroom. Except for more detailed visions of “5G” coupled with actual eLTE deployments, the carrier showroom was more or less what I previously viewed at various trade shows and during my last Huawei tour in 2010. The enterprise showroom and the developers congress, on the other hand, was an eye-opener in terms of the following:
- The extent of Huawei’s enterprise service, storage, router, switch, chip, module and analytics product offering;
- Huawei’s enterprise software partnerships with SAP and other enterprise database and software application providers;
- Huawei’s commitment to invest $1 billion to build a developer community ecosystem; and
- The number of Huawei “Internet of Things” case studies involving smart city, smart home, public safety, smart plant, health care, railway, utility, intelligent infrastructure and media.
Outlined below is a translated Q&A discussion with Patrick Zhang
What do you expect from this conference? What are the top three takeaways you want for the audience?
We see this congress as a platform for sharing success stories, learning solutions opened up by partners and exchanging novel ideas. I hope developers will find opportunities for cooperation at the event. Let’s create more value for our customers.
I think the following three takeaways are critical for participants:
- Find answers to these questions: How is Huawei building the ecosystem? Specifically, what capabilities has Huawei opened up to developers and how did the company do so? How are these capabilities used? What has this achieved?
- What support does Huawei provide for developers, from developer application and registration to solution development, testing, certification, go-to-market and marketing? What is Huawei’s developer community like?
- What cooperation and support policies does Huawei have for partners (i.e., talent development plan, open lab, joint marketing)?
How do you see the developer scene in China? In what ways is it more advanced or still lagging behind?
The developer scene in China has improved significantly over the past few years, and Huawei’s opening-up will further contribute to the development landscape.
Are there geographical differences and, if yes, what are they? What do you think accounts for these differences?
North America, Europe and Asia are quite different in terms of their development stages. It’s quite natural that developers from different places are different, too. Factors such as local economic development and societal needs for ICT infrastructure and applications might lead to the differences.
How can Huawei eliminate those differences and facilitate the cross-pollination of best practices?
As an ICT equipment and solutions provider, Huawei has always focused on ICT infrastructure, and opened up its innovative and leading ICT capabilities to partners to build an open environment and enablement platform for various business scenarios. By pooling together innovative applications as well as grouping partners who are capable of developing and customizing these applications industrywide, we aim to better respond to customers’ personalized and differentiated needs with joint innovations.
Where have you seen successes for the carriers where there is collaboration with developers?
Huawei seeks to build an open operations platform that provides a ROADS (Real-time, On-demand, All-online, DIY and Social) experience for carriers. We aim to help carriers open up their capabilities and aggregate applications by opening up their basic network, communications, billing and data capabilities. In doing so, we are able to provide smarter pipes for connection and new business opportunities for developers and help carriers make inroads into strategic home and enterprise markets.
Huawei has a proven track record in working with carriers and developers in multiple areas.
- First, we have been working with carriers in China and abroad to build a cloud ecosystem.
- Second, to apply SDN and NFV, we also need an ecosystem, which is a hot topic among global carriers.
- Third, as carriers possess high-quality big data, how can they make full use of the huge amounts of data without breaching user privacy?
- Fourth, as carrier networks primarily connect people for the time being, how can carriers build an IoT ecosystem to enable connections between things? How can they open up their existing capabilities in communications, QoS, bandwidth management and location? All these are strategic areas where carriers and developers can work together.
How has such collaboration led to win-win and revenue opportunities for the carriers and developers?
Huawei has partnered up with over 2,000 developers. Thanks to the partnerships, carriers have become more competitive as they are able to meet customers’ personalized and differentiated needs. We plan to create a market worth over $100 billion by 2020 for these partners.
How about competition with OTA providers? What are your thoughts? How will you narrow the gap between carriers you serve and such OTA providers?
Due to long-term large investments in ICT infrastructure, carriers are way more competitive than OTA providers in terms of communications, [quality of service], bandwidth management, location and big data in telecom networks.
Huawei has always focused on ICT infrastructure, which enables us to offer E2E ICT solutions. By opening up product and solution capabilities in areas such as basic networks, mobile security and IT infrastructure, we aim to help developers innovate more quickly and easily, thus facilitating carriers’ strategic transformations.
With its leading products and technologies, Huawei gives partners a competitive edge by helping carriers further develop and monetize their networks and data to bridge the gap between carriers and OTA providers. I’ll elaborate on this:
- First, we have attractive market and customer bases worldwide.
- Second, Huawei possesses competitive ICT products.
- Third, Huawei opens up the core technologies and capabilities of these products to developers, which they find very attractive.
- Fourth, Huawei will help developers better leverage the capabilities opened up by Huawei in areas such as processes, technological support and community experience sharing. We will even use our customer base to help our partners develop their solutions and increase their market share.
- Fifth, Huawei provides developer marketing funds to support the partnership building and marketing activities of developers.
As a leader in the global telecom equipment market, Huawei helps carriers connect billions of people and tens of billions of devices. To build a developer ecosystem, Huawei will open up its 6,000 channels and representative offices in 170 regions worldwide to its development partners. In addition, Huawei will invest 5% of its sales revenue (approximately $200 million this year) to help our partners expand the market.
We plan to create a market worth over $100 billion by 2020 for developers.
Which area do you think holds the most promise for OpenStack-based development? Why?
OpenStack is an enabler for open and standard cloud infrastructures. It offers high interoperability and scalability. I am optimistic about its applications in enterprise cloud data centers and telecom clouds. Huawei is the top contributor to OpenStack development in the telecom field.
In what way do you think B2B technology vendors play a positive role in the developer community? For instance, what do you think of Huawei’s role and how the company has made a difference in augmenting the cause?
Huawei defines “Partners+ICT” as its developer ecosystem strategy to jointly build a better connected world and win infinite business opportunities. As an ICT equipment and solutions provider, Huawei has always focused on ICT infrastructure and opened its innovative and leading ICT capabilities to its partners. In doing so, Huawei intends to build an open environment and enablement platform for various business scenarios to aggregate innovative industry applications. Furthermore, Huawei aims to achieve joint innovation by working with partners with the capabilities to develop and customize innovative applications.
Huawei’s long-term focus on ICT infrastructure combined with its partners’ deep understanding of different business scenarios and customer needs will surely produce win-win results.
As for application developers, they will be able to create more value and gain more benefits by using Huawei’s highly recognized open platforms.
As for Huawei, by working with application developers the company will more easily be able to meet customers’ personalized needs. By providing platforms, Huawei helps to create sound industry ecosystems. These ecosystems will then help Huawei obtain more opportunities for cooperation and boost the sales of its box products. On this basis, Huawei’s business model will surely continue to change. Following the rollout of cloud services, Huawei’s equipment sales model has gradually changed into one based on software and services, including licenses, revenue sharing, pay as you use, annual use fees and subscriptions.
With cloud and the billions of additional connections expected through the IoT, how will Huawei engage with the developer community?
Over the next five years, Huawei will invest $1 billion to establish a developer enablement platform to achieve joint innovation with developers.
Huawei will establish a developer-centric platform called eSDK based on the LEADS concept. LEADS stands for Lab as a Service, End-to-end, Agile, Dedicated and Social.
Huawei will establish seven open labs in Chengdu, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Germany, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, thus providing development and verification environments for ecosystem developers.
Over the next three years, Huawei will invest $200 million in cloud ecosystems and train 10,000 Huawei-certified experts specializing in cloud computing.
In the enterprise market, Huawei will open its 170-plus rep offices and 6,000 channels to all its partners and invest 5% of its sales revenue (approximately $200 million this year) to help our partners expand the market.
Where do you see Huawei’s developer community evolving based on where it is today, and are you satisfied with its current progress?
As both a developer community and an open platform, Huawei’s eSDK will include all its development resources (such as ecosystems, open ICT capabilities, documentation, tools, remote labs), success stories about its partners, and a communication platform for developers. Huawei’s developer community is an interactive platform for developers to learn about open capabilities, download related documents and tools, share experiences and discuss development problems, and market their solutions.
The complete technical support system consists of an online community and offline activities:
- Online activities: Establish a universal developer community, publish the latest news, technical documentation, provide success stories relating to Huawei’s open capabilities and create a space for developers to communicate with Huawei experts on joint innovations.
- Offline activities: Hold the Huawei Developers Congress on an annual basis, as well as other offline activities such as developers’ contests, technical salons and specific training sessions.
What are the gaps in skill sets of the B2B technology developer community? How do you think schools or curricula can close these gaps? Is Huawei actively working to bridge such gaps?
The main gap is a lack of practice. To bridge this gap, Huawei plans to establish the eSDK developer-centric platform based on the LEADS concept, which, as described previously, stands for Lab as a Service, End-to-end, Agile, Dedicated, and Social.
In addition, Huawei will spearhead initiatives such as building open labs and providing technical training to help improve developers’ practical skills.
- Huawei will establish seven open labs in Chengdu, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Germany, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, thus providing development and verification environments for ecosystem developers.
- Over the next three years, Huawei will invest $200 million in cloud ecosystems to train 10,000 Huawei-certified experts specializing in cloud computing.
Mr. Patrick Zhang is president of the marketing and solutions department, products and solutions, at Huawei Technologies. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the ICT industry to this role. Since joining Huawei in 1992, Zhang has held a number of management positions across various Huawei business units. He has been appointed as director of the switch business, general VP of the technical support department, president of the fixed network product line, president of the wireless product line, general VP of Latin America and president of the marketing and solutions department of Huawei’s enterprise business group. Zhang holds a Master of Electronic Engineering degree from Fudan University.
