Ian Moyse, Industry Cloud Influencer
As we progress fast to a post COVID new world of distributed working and changed expectations of business delivery Huawei laid out its bold plans for a smarter world by 2030. A world of new value creation for customer, supply chains at all levels and businesses across industry sector.
Over 5 days Huawei Connect portrayed an intelligent decade ahead bringing major changes to every aspect of our lives through customer demand, business need and the capabilities given to us by the continued emergence of technological innovations. Predictions were given that in the next 10 years human society will progress into an intelligent society model that is already refocusing on greater sustainability and development of human society as a better place for all. Huawei not only outlined innovations across industries that are now defined as feasible realities, but also looked to the future with challenges and directions of research for the future development of industries and technologies to support them. It was interesting to see the vision laid out so firmly and with wide supporting research and how a technology firm is aligning itself so strongly so geo-social and humanitarian issues alongside its investments in technology innovation and delivery.
The foundations of the Huawei world are connection and communication. A global digital transformation inclusive of all, through consumer to business and across geographic boundaries and social groups. Huawei has spent 3 years gaining insights through researching and 2000+ workshops with thousands of customers, academic and industry partners to develop the Intelligent World 2030 vision and report to predict trends and needs for the next decade and to define how ICT can solve critical human development problems and challenges. This leads quickly to directions that future technologies need to take and support us in for positive human development, from improved communication networks to support the growth of assumed mobility and remote working to increased efficiencies of compute and digital power.
We are digitally evolving and fast; 30 years prior we experienced the start of communication enrichment as mobile networks, distributed computing and smarter devices began to change the capability of human connectivity. 20 years on and we witnessed a fuelled need for greater reliability, speed and connectivity that could reach each corner of the world and be utilised whenever and wherever. As we have seen in the past, a push for a PC on every desktop, Huawei is now envisioning a world with everyone and everything connected, be it at home or business, leading to a more intelligent world that embellishes greater collaboration; human to human, human to machine and machine to machine. This evolution is going to drive change across industry sector, growth of data connectivity and use of technological innovation as a must.
Huawei announced 11, yes 11, scenario-based solutions of innovation covering sectors of public services, transportation, finance, energy and manufacturing all aligned to delivering a brighter digital future. These initiatives are not purely product based, but encompassing processes, consulting, integration and operations. The theme across all the scenarios was turning digital reality and transformation into reality. The big and firm shift message for me was for partners to move from supply channels to true competency partners, that are aligned to customer and supply chain needs and drive innovation for greater business outcomes and opportunity creation. It is no longer about whether or not to digitally transform, but on how to achieve this.
There was clear focus on helping governmental bodies to digitally transform their processes in all areas to enable smart cities to evolve as a reality. Cities that are more green, resilient comfortable and human friendly though utilisation of innovation. Add to this identification of and prevention of potential health problems through utilisation of big data modelling of medical data, shifting to a humanised and not monetarised health model. Imagine adding to this the ability for vertical farms to operate on a large scale, neutralising climate issues and providing food supply for all, perhaps through the growing potential of 3D printing nutritionally rich artificial meat
Incredibly all of this is a realistic possibility for the decade ahead and no longer a flight of fantasy of some Hollywood movie. It needs continued strong pushing from industry giants such as Huawei to challenge the status quo and position the art of the possible to the wider economic audience. Not all of this of course will happen exactly as planned and when predicted, but unless we strive to paint the picture of the potential, we as a global economy will not move forwards fast enough to bringing the recovery and positive improvement to global communities.
In Energy, Huawei paints the vision of helping industry players bring smart energy to the masses in both power and gas whilst achieving low and zero carbon efficient and secure systems is key. Expand this into the transportation arena and think smart airports, aircraft and transportation systems to improve logistics, efficiency and the aligned carbon footprint. Huawei aspires to also transform those in the finance and manufacturing sectors through stronger payment solutions and safer more efficient manufacturing methods.
So, Huawei is far more than the brand suggests to many, behind the scenes continues to be a powerhouse of not only innovation and technology solutions, but also a growing ecosystem of creative thought and cross industry partnerships that push to challenge our way of thinking and doing. Where other vendors may talk and announce technology, I see Huawei leading a vision to deliver a changed world vision, business aligned scenarios and an underlying mission to bring improvement to the world.
We can expect to see a global network that will connect billions of people and billions of devices to create new experiences across every aspect that touches our lives at work and play. To support this emerging reality we need networks, communications and compute power that is expansive, fast, reliable and affordable. To get there we will need to see progressive digitisation and transformation of operating models and this will require an ecosystem of expertise and partners to support the work required. Through this we shall see enhanced and consistent experience levels across the home, office, in vehicle and when out and about, all supporting any device, anytime, anywhere access.
The overall strategy is not new to Huawei who have been promoting digital transformation externally and delivering it internally since 2016 Though it’s own transformational experience Huawei has formulated an open digital enablement platform called Horiz which will now be a foundation to help cross industry enterprises achieve their own digitisation. Horiz will underpin customers paths to improve quality and efficiency and deliver greater resilience through innovation. This is only the start with Huawei’s strong plans to deliver over 300 tailored service solutions through 800+ service solution partners in the next 5 years alone.
The world was changing fast already driven by innovation, political and ecological planet drivers, the pandemic accelerated this further bring agenda’s forward 7-8 years and changing mindsets.
Adoption, receptiveness and indeed now necessity for new business models will continue to drive accelerated adoption across AI, cloud, automation (be it robots or self-driving cars) and infrastructure and communication improvements such as wider 5G delivery.
The underlying theme is not ‘can we’, nor ‘should we’, but ‘how do we’. How do we make best and fast use of so many opportunities presented by technology advancement and affordability; Industry requires not only technology, but expertise and supporting partners to help with the heavy lifting in order to get to a more valuable end state for the business, customer and citizen.
Further detail and studies from the Huawei plans and research can be explored in their new paper on theIntelligent World here.