Huawei Technologies Nigeria has inaugurated Nigeria’s first local cloud aimed at improving a digital ecosystem to prosper the nation.
The inauguration was held at the 2024 Huawei Cloud Summit Nigeria on Tuesday in Lagos, with the theme, “Leap Now with Cloud”.
According to a website, www.azure.microsoft.com, the cloud is a vast online storage space where people and businesses store their files and applications, accessible from anywhere with an internet connection.
Speaking, Huawei’s Chief Executive Officer Chris Lu noted the significance of building its local cloud in Nigeria, saying there were three aspects to it.
Lu said that having a local cloud meant that the company could provide a much better performance as regards the latency of less than 15 milliseconds.
“The second one is about trust; having your own data in Nigeria, in Lagos, provides a lot of confidence and trust for our customers, the government, and regulators, who believe it is important for entrepreneurs to have their own company’s data, and consumers’ data in Nigeria; this is about data sovereignty.
“The third one is about commitment: building a local cloud means we are operating locally in the long term because Huawei has been here for 25 years, “ he said.
The CEO said that this milestone showed that Huawei was willing to develop an ecosystem with all its local partners together for the future.
Lu said: “I will say, Huawei sees a huge potential in the Nigerian market, not only because of the vast majority of the population and all the advanced developers, but also the fast-growing digital economy.
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“Also, I see great talents in Nigeria, with a lot of young talents that are so professional, efficient, and that is why we are strongly believing in the opportunity.”
Also, Huawei’s Deputy Managing Director, Mr Osita Iweze, said that the cloud technology was relatively new in the country and so there were skills gap.
Iweze said, however, that the company was addressing the challenge by the company’s various programmes.
“We are addressing this through our Information and Communications Technology (ICT)for Change; Seeds for the Future; Women in ICT programme.
“Also, those initiatives give training in cloud, 5G, AI, and it develops their skills in those.
“So, we are going to continue to partner with the federal and state government, and the private sector to continue to provide training and capacity building, “ he said.
The deputy MD said also, security was a fundamental approach to all Huawei’s business processes.
According to him, It is embedded in all the company’s design: security by design, by fiat.
“Now to give, we realize that security is a problem for customers and information out there is that about over 90 per cent of customers are fearful of the cloud environment because they do not know where their data is.
“Now, we understand that and so we have implemented a three-C security management framework for cloud service processes and this three-Cs are cloud service, cybersecurity and compliance standards
“Now, we do that for all our products, solutions and services; so, it incorporates 16 global standards and our internal regulations as well; that should give some kind of trust to our customers.
“Also, we follow industry standards all over the world, “ Iweze said.
In his remarks, one of Huawei’ partners, OPAY, a fintech company, commended the technology company for its support in providing services to the Nigerian masses.
Its Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Mr Dotun Adekunle, said: “We rely on them for infrastructure service, provisioning and support, so that we can keep doing what we do to the masses of the market in the streets of Nigeria.
“What we like about Huawei is the nature of the relationship. I think that they see us more as partners than just providers and we feel that it is a strategic decision for us to work with a partner like Huawei.”
