Huawei pledges new LatAm datacenters as cloud demand grows

Chinese ICT giant Huawei says it is committed to landing new cloud regions (core datacenter clusters) and availability zones (AZs, smaller datacenter hubs) in Latin America – with Colombia being the likely next stop.

“We have established in the past the possibility of including Colombia and that remains in the plan. I don’t have a date for that. We’re investing in bringing in more developers, bringing in more industries, and expanding the scenarios in which industries can get benefit from the use of Huawei Cloud,” the company’s public affairs VP for Latin America, Cesar Funes Garay, said in a press conference in reply to BNamericas.

During an event this week in Buenos Aires, Fernando Liu, head of the cloud division for Latin America, said that the company intended to open four new availability zones in Latin America: two in Mexico, one in Brazil and one in Chile.

At present, Huawei operates three main cloud regions in Latin America – in Brazil, Chile and Mexico – plus two “national” regions in Argentina and Peru, with nine AZs in total.

Within an AZ, computing, network, storage and other resources are logically divided into multiple clusters and AZs within a region are interconnected with fiber to allow customers to build cross-AZ high-availability systems, according to the company.

Huawei had previously announced plans to add new content-delivery networks (CDNs, structures to take content closer to the client and reduce latency) in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Paraguay and Uruguay, for example, were among those markets, together with Bolivia, Barbados, Suriname, Belize, the Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica and Nicaragua.

According to Funes, Huawei has invested over US$100mn in its cloud developer program for Latin America.

“We look at cloud as part of the main component of continuing to improve digital transformation abilities to all industries. This is a software business. Everything as a service is the main message we’re always looking at,” he said.

Worldwide, Huawei reports 29 cloud regions and 75 AZs, serving customers in over 170 countries. Huawei Cloud now has over 4mn developers and 41,000 partners worldwide, according to the company.

In Latin America, the group claims to have reached more than 1,400 partners for its cloud ecosystem. Funes also said that Huawei Cloud has 16,000 certified developers and attracted over 3,000 enterprises, which are working on more than 2,000 solutions together with the company.

R&D AND RESTRICTIONS

Huawei's LatAm corporate communications VP, Michael Chen, said that renewable energy, namely the supply of photovoltaic panels, and cloud computing were two of the company's main growth engines. 

According to Chen, finance, manufacturing, energy, e-commerce, internet/gaming and online education are key segments for the company in Latin America.

The executive also said the company is doubling down on R&D and innovation in the region, although a breakdown was not provided. 

Worldwide, Huawei boosted investments in research and development to US$23.2bn in 2022, equivalent to 25.1% of net revenues of US$92.3bn. Revenues in the Americas region grew 9.1% to US$4.6bn. 

"We have learned how to continue supporting our customers even with the restrictions in place, restrictions imposed in May 2019. What we have been doing, even prior to that, is developing a supply chain anticipating risks, working on an integrated strategy," said Funes about US government curbs on supplies to Huawei.

The design of the company's products now considers in advance the components and items they will require and that might be restricted, said Xe. 

"These contingency plans helped the company to really survive. In all these years we were able to replace 13,000 components to keep our service to our customers."

DUMPING CLAIMS

BNamericas also asked the company about claims by global fiber manufacturers with operations in Latin America that Chinese firms could be practicing dumping, with heavily subsidized exports. 

The companies claim that other markets, such as Europe and the US, already either imposed anti-dumping measures or import restrictions through tax increases, and that Latin American governments should do likewise.

As reported exclusively by BNamericas, the Brazilian government, despite close Brazil-China economic ties, is mulling an investigation into potential dumping practices. 

“We have been working in this industry of ICT and digital transformation for more than 35 years and our responsibility is with our customers. We gained their trust. And we fulfill all the regulations in every market that we serve. Whatever kind of regulation or standard that we have to follow, we will continue to be consistent,” Funes said, adding that he was not aware of the potential anti-dumping probe.

Also, according to Funes, Huawei is focused on promoting innovative and accessible fiber solutions in the region, such as the recent fiber-to-room product, currently used by telcos such as Brazil’s Oi.

EQUIPMENT DONATION

In related news, Huawei announced Friday that it donated IdeaHub equipment to the Bolivian parliament.

IdeaHub is a sort of “smart board,” bundling intelligent writing, high-definition video conferencing and wireless sharing, according to the company.

Huawei said the initiative is intended to "improve communication between government entities that contribute to the promotion of the ICT environment, strengthening the technological transformation for the development" of Bolivia.