Rotating Chairman, Huawei
Huawei Connect 2021: Diving into Digital
Watch the #HuaweiConnect Day 1 livestream session to hear #Huawei Rotating Chairman Eric Xu on digital transformation, and the “#HUAWEICLOUD: Everything as a Service” keynote speech from #Huawei Executive Vice President, CEO of Cloud BU, President of Consumer Cloud Service Zhang Ping’an. #DiveIntoDigital.
About Eric Xu
Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, stated at the company’s 2022 Annual Report Press Conference in March 2023 that the year ahead would be “crucial to Huawei's sustainable survival and development,” citing a “challenging external environment” and “non-market factors” that continue to affect operations. He said Huawei would focus on unlocking new growth opportunities, enhancing business resilience, and ensuring product competitiveness. Xu also estimated that Huawei’s addressable markets would exceed one trillion US dollars by 2027. In earlier appearances, Xu commented on the impact of U.S. sanctions on the semiconductor industry, stating that China’s semiconductor industry would “take efforts to self-save” and that he believed it would “realize a very strong and self-reliant industry.” He also discussed Huawei’s investment in research and development, noting that the company invests more than 10% of revenue annually, and highlighted the role of ICT technology in reducing industrial emissions. At the 2021 Global Analyst Summit, Xu said that “unwarranted U.S. sanctions” could trigger a new global economic crisis<｜begin▁of▁file｜>.
Transcript (119 segments)
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Host1:49
Distinguished guests, welcome to the first day of Huawei Connect 2021. First, please give a warm welcome to Mr. Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, to deliver an opening speech: Dive into Digital.
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Eric Xu2:39
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for joining Huawei Connect online. Connecting with you online clearly shows the progress the world has made in digital transformation. Today I'll talk about how Huawei is innovating non-stop to speed up that progress further.
The world is changing fast these days, and so is digital technology. Going digital has become an important, if not only, global consensus. More than 170 countries have released a national digital strategy. Recent developments have reminded us that digital transformation is more real and urgent than ever.
First, the lingering pandemic has accelerated the digitalization of products and services over the last two years. According to McKinsey, COVID-19 has caused the digital transformation to jump ahead by seven years globally, and ten years in Asia Pacific. The research also found that the growing digital is no longer viewed as a hard endeavor; instead, companies have proceeded 20 to 25 times faster than expected. And now it's pretty much accepted that hybrid work will be the future of the workplace.
The second catalyst is the proactive global response to carbon emissions and global warming. The EU has announced its plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and China has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. Digital technology holds the key to reducing emissions across all industries. According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030, ICT technology will help reduce industrial emissions by 12.1 billion tons, roughly 10 times the amount emitted by the ICT industry itself.
Third, the increasingly complex global environment has caused companies to place greater strategic priority on business resilience, for which digital technology is a key enabler. Economic recovery from the pandemic and low-carbon development are both pushing businesses and organizations to act faster in digital transformation.
The good news is that underlying technology has never been more ready. Many companies and countries came to realize this in their efforts to grapple with the pandemic. The digital technology and infrastructure is actually laying the foundation for digital transformation. Globally, 176 5G commercial networks have been launched, and there are over 10,000 projects exploring how 5G can drive industrial digitalization. On the consumer end, there are more than 490 million 5G users. According to IDC, 81 percent of organizations worldwide are using cloud or have apps in the cloud.
AI is going even faster. A study by Roland Berger shows that AI has already penetrated every sector. In high-tech, telecoms, finance, automotive, and assembly, AI adoption exceeds 60 percent. And in business, healthcare, and retail, adoption rates are roughly 50, 40 percent, and 38 percent.
Just as digital transformation is a shared vision, the technology itself can be shared too. So what's the best way forward? All countries, businesses, and industries are different, and they have unique challenges. So of course, their understanding, strategies, pace of development, and approaches to digital transformation tend to differ as well. True digital transformation is still a long way ahead.
Huawei's mission and vision is to bring digital to every person, home, and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To me, this mission and vision is also about how we can help different industries go digital. You could even say that we wouldn't be able to accomplish our mission without a successful digital transformation of industries.
There are four pillars to our value proposition. First, ubiquitous connectivity. Every person has the right to be connected, and Huawei's role is to bring connectivity to all people and things, and to keep raising the bar for user experience. Second, pervasive intelligence. We see AI as a general-purpose technology that can help all industries bring every step of their value creation process to the next level. Third, personalized experience. Every person is unique. We are committed to providing personalized products and services so that the individuality of every person is fully respected and their potential fully unleashed. Fourth, enabling digital platforms. Digitalization will bring civilization to entirely new heights. We're committed to providing open, secure, flexible, and easy-to-use digital platforms to spark innovation, drive industrial upgrade, and advance social progress.
Digital development relies on digital technology, and digital technology requires continuous innovation to create value. Cloud computing, AI, and the network are key digital technologies. My talk today is built around the theme of this year, 'Dive into Digital'. I'll share the progress, innovation, and our thoughts on industry development around cloud services, AI, networks, and low carbon.
First, cloud services. On September 1, 2016, at the first Huawei Cloud at Huawei Connect, I delivered a keynote called 'Embrace the Cloud to be a Digital Enterprise'. On March 19, 2017, we announced the setup of our Cloud BU at the Huawei China Ecosystem Partners Conference. We said that from 2017 onwards, Huawei would ramp up efforts to build open public cloud platforms. With the public cloud services, we were to focus on selected industries and work with partners to build a cloud ecosystem and grow the pie together.
Now, four years later, Huawei Cloud has brought together more than 2.3 million developers, 14,000 consulting partners, and 6,000 technology partners, and also made more than 4,500 services available in Huawei Cloud Marketplace. It has become an important platform for internet companies and traditional businesses to take their organizations digital. Huawei Cloud, together with public cloud with partners, now serves more than 170 countries with 27 regions around the globe.
According to a 2020 study by Gartner, Huawei Cloud was the fastest-growing cloud in the IaaS market, a top-two cloud service provider in China, and in the top five globally. We've come a long way, and that's just the beginning. Our mission is to build a cloud foundation for an intelligent world through ubiquitous cloud and intelligence. As industries move faster to go digital, Huawei Cloud is primed to develop even further.
As digital transformation goes deeper and digital apps become more diverse and sophisticated, traditional cloud services with scalable resources and simplified O&M are far from enough, even though they are still needed. Super-elastic resources and agile app development are the way forward for cloud services. This is why tech companies and traditional businesses have started embracing the idea of cloud native. This shift will allow for greater resource availability and agility. Beyond that, greater value will be created by harnessing the power of big data and AI.
As an advocate and early adopter of cloud native, Huawei Cloud has released a number of cloud native services since 2016, helping internet companies and traditional businesses become cloud native. Building on this experience, we brought up the concept of Cloud Native 2.0 in 2020, which we hope can enable all businesses to become new cloud natives.
As cloud native apps become more widespread across different scenarios, the need for distributed deployment, unified management across clouds and regions, and ensuring a consistent experience will become more important. To address this need, we've been working to launch the industry's first distributed cloud native service. Today, I officially launch Huawei Cloud UCS, a distributed cloud native service available on Huawei Cloud. UCS stands for Ubiquitous Cloud Native Service. With Huawei Cloud UCS, we want to provide enterprises with a consistent experience while using cloud native apps that are not constrained by geographical, cross-cloud, or traffic limitations.
UCS aims to bring cloud native capabilities to every service scenario and accelerate adoption of cloud native apps in all industries.
Now let's move on to AI. In October 2018, Huawei launched the full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio at Huawei Connect in Shanghai. On August 23, 2019, we announced the open-source plan for our AI computing framework, MindSpore, in Shenzhen. To date, these plans have been well executed.
First, as for hardware, more than 10 partners have launched AI hardware products that use our Ascend modules or cards. Second, MindSpore went open source in March 2020 as scheduled. By August 2021, it's been downloaded over 600,000 times, making it the most vibrant AI community in China. There are also more than 100 universities that use MindSpore in their classrooms. It's fair to say that MindSpore has become the mainstream AI computing framework in China.
In addition, more than 500 partners have developed based on Ascend, over 600 AI solutions used across industries. Overall, our full-stack, all-scenario AI portfolio is moving forward as planned.
At Huawei Connect 2019, we released the Atlas 900 cluster. At the time, one cluster used 1,024 Ascend 910 chips, delivering 256 PFLOPS of computing power. Now, a single Atlas 900 cluster can use up to 4,096 Ascend 910 chips, delivering up to 1 EFLOPS on non-blocking networks.
In addition, Huawei Cloud ModelArts can use inter-cluster dynamic adaptive routing to expand the computing power of a cluster by 4 to 32 times depending on power constraints, to reach 32 EFLOPS with an increase in linear speedup ratio to over 85 percent.
That Atlas 900 cluster and the cloud services based on it currently serve more than 300 enterprises across transportation, finance, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. They are used by many enterprises and research institutions for GPT model training.
These are some of the models it supports: the Huawei Cloud Pangu GPT models for Chinese NLP, for computer vision, for drug molecules, for scientific computing; LugiNet, a dedicated remote sensing framework; the FunctionGPT model for Chinese NLP; and the Pharmaceutical GPT model for Pangu Lab.
In Huawei's AI portfolio, ModelArts is positioned as an enabler of AI apps. Its goal is to enable simple AI app development, addressing the growing shortage of AI professionals and experts. We hope ModelArts would equip every engineer with a basic grasp on AI to develop their own AI models and apps.
Over the past three years, ModelArts has been used in thousands of AI projects. We have continued innovating, accumulating industry know-how to better adapt to different stages of digital transformation and AI adoption. This has resulted in a series of full-pipeline, scenario-based services. The creation of these services marks the first step in realizing our goals for ModelArts.
For most enterprises, there are three stages of developing AI apps, and ModelArts provides targeted services for each. In early stages, most enterprises explore AI for generalized or specific tasks. They are mostly focused on model development and feasibility. Their AI capabilities tend to be often limited. To address this, ModelArts provides services and development tools like domain suites, example scenarios, Pangu GPT models, and pre-trained models, allowing engineers to quickly pick up, train, and verify AI models without too much coding.
The second stage is 'quick win', where enterprises tend to focus on how to use AI to create immediate value. AI development is no longer about developing models to test feasibility, but about facilitating one or more real-world tasks, catering to specific deployment environments and industry requirements, and adopting trustworthy designs. Accordingly, ModelArts provides trusted components and security algorithms, ModelBox, AutoSearch, and applying GPT models, allowing AI engineers to adapt to diverse deployment environments and rapidly develop AI apps for real-world scenarios.
The third stage is about developing systematic AI apps or AI subsystems. This often requires collaboration between apps, tools, and systems. ModelArts supports simplified and efficient AI system development by offering MLOps, OptVerse, scientific computing, Pangu GPT models, heterogeneous distributed schedulers, and various industry-specific components and tools from ecosystem partners.
With ModelArts, we're committed to equipping every engineer with the tools and support they need to develop AI apps, and we look forward to achieving this goal sooner.
When integrating AI into actual production scenarios, even the most seasoned AI experts would find it hard. This is because industrial scenarios are varied and fragmented. Even with highly automated tools, AI model development has to be customized case by case, which is extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. Besides, for AI models to be accurate, we have to feed them huge amounts of data. A lack of scenario-based data means that models often fail to meet production requirements, rendering AI useless in certain scenarios. This is where GPT models are a good solution.
With GPT models, you don't have to start from scratch when developing AI for a given scenario. Smaller, scenario-specific models can be automatically extracted through targeted training based on a GPT model. This shortens development from months to days, marking a shift from manual AI model development to industrial-grade development. More importantly, targeted training based on GPT models greatly improves model performance and AI usability.
There are actual results from our southern factory. With only 40 data samples, AI models trained with traditional methods can only reach 80 percent accuracy, which doesn't meet our production requirements. With the GPT models, we can boost accuracy to 99.5 percent to enable intelligent defect detection.
Next, let's move to enterprise networks. As organizations go digital, they tend to see exponential growth in network complexity as they deal with more connected branches and access locations in a hybrid workplace, more dynamic changes to experience due to greater employee mobility, more connections as office networks converge with IoT, more performance requirements, and frequent network changes due to cloud and new apps. A broader management scope with more types of equipment from more vendors, more demand on network assurance as the focus shifts from connection to experience. But the number of O&M engineers won't see numeric growth, if any at all. The gap between O&M complexity and the number of engineers will only continue to expand.
This challenge can be addressed by applying digital technology to network O&M. Innovating, not relying on more manual workforce, is the right way to address growing complexity of network O&M. So we came up with the concept of Autonomous Driving Networks, or ADN. We believe that networks of the future will be like autonomous vehicles that can self-operate. ADNs will have four features.
First, self-fulfilling, where service is automatically deployed based on user intent. The ultimate goal is to fully automate service deployment. Second, self-healing, where networks can predict and prevent faults with event-based self-recovery, fully automated O&M used to automatically heal. Third, self-optimizing, where networks can self-adapt and optimize to provide a superior experience. The ultimate goal is fully automated optimization. Fourth, autonomy, where network functions autonomously adapt, learn, and evolve. This is our vision for ADN. They are also the ultimate goals we are committed to.
Over the past two years, we've been driving ADN innovation for global telecom networks. We've also been working with customers from finance, education, and healthcare to innovate and deploy new applications.
In finance, Huawei and The City Bank have applied ADN to upgrade their data center network. In 2020, our ADN enabled end-to-end automation of services across 40-plus use cases in a single-DC, single-vendor scenario. This year, we will work to support multi-cloud and multi-vendor heterogeneous scenarios. Take money transfer to international students, for example. In the past, launching a new service like this took an average of over 30-plus days for collaborative design, assessment, and change management. And now it can be done within 30 minutes.
Rapid fault localization is the biggest headache when managing a DC network, but it's no longer the case with ADN. ADNs offer end-to-end visibility into network quality. It can also locate 75 types of common faults within three minutes and provide advice for fixes within five minutes. This year, our ADN began using knowledge graphs for self-learning, analyzing live network data to continuously learn about new faults, boosting overall coverage to 97 percent.
In education, Huawei and Shenzhen University are applying it to campus networks. As the university deploys more smart teaching and campus services, it has to manage more IoT devices like cameras, barrier gates, smart doors, and electrical recording devices. Across their four campuses, they have more than 500,000 devices across 50 categories. They're used in different places and are connected via the campus network, which could potentially pose a security risk. Our ADN helps to automatically identify devices and grant access within seconds. The AI-powered network can also learn about and enable unknown devices online. Now it can identify 98 percent of devices on its own.
Wireless access over campus networks has become mainstream, while Wi-Fi interference, roaming, and application support are big challenges. Manual optimization was used and is very inefficient. Now, with Huawei's AI-based optimization, no manual work is needed, and signal fulfillment has increased from 64 to 90 percent.
Finally, Huawei is supporting low carbon with digital technology. Digital technology is key to going low carbon. Huawei continues to innovate in digital technology to support low-carbon development. We have three priorities in this area.
First, investing in technologies to deliver more energy-efficient ICT products for a low-carbon ICT industry. Second, innovating where power electronics and digital technologies converge to promote clean energy and the digitalization of traditional energy. Third, providing digital technology to help all sectors go digital and low carbon.
Helping the ICT industry go low carbon is our first priority. For decades, Huawei has been developing equipment and solutions around the goal of reducing energy consumption and emissions. New requirements to combat climate change and achieve low carbon in all sectors raise the bar for ICT equipment. In response, we will set higher goals for energy saving through innovation.
Our second priority is to promote clean energy and the digitalization of traditional energy to support CO2 peak emissions and carbon neutrality. To speed up clean energy and digitalization of traditional energy, we recently set up a subsidiary, Huawei Digital Power. Its vision is to develop clean energy while promoting digitalization of traditional energy. It integrates digital technology and power electronics and converts information and energy flows to drive an energy revolution for a better, greener future.
Specifically, how digital power converges power electronics and digital technologies, using bits to manage watts, or using digital technology to control power electronics equipment. Our major areas include clean power generation and digitalization, transportation electrification, growing ICT infrastructure, and integrated smart energy. We provide secure, efficient, green, and intelligent solutions. For this, we also provide the energy sector with enabling platforms for embedded power, intelligent distribution, and storage. We're also developing a unified energy management cloud service platform, an open app platform for our customers and partners.
Through these products and solutions, our Digital Power aims to support low carbon in households, buildings, factories, campuses, villages, and cities. We will work to drive the shift towards low carbon and ultimately zero carbon.
Our third priority is to reduce CO2 emissions in traditional sectors, especially those with heavier emissions. This is central to the transition towards a low-carbon world. It's also a key part of our innovation strategy. We remain committed to providing digital technology to help all sectors go digital and low carbon. It's fair to say that cutting emissions is a shared goal between Huawei and all industries we work with.
We've made some exciting progress so far. In smart transportation, our traffic light control solution reduces traffic jams and emissions in cities. Our smart highway solution supports free-flow tolling and has helped to reduce fuel use by over 300,000 tons thus far. Our smart heating solution is reaping benefits for the Chinese city Harbin, where on-demand heating reduces energy use by an average of 12.1 percent. If smart heating is used across 13 billion square meters of building space in China, CO2 emissions will decrease by over 16 million tons per year.
Our smart agriculture solution is also creating real value. In Switzerland, drones using big data and 5G can inspect the farmland 20 times faster. Through precision breeding, firms can reduce the weight of feed use by 90 percent.
No doubt that digitalization and digital transformation is a long-term process that won't happen overnight. Fortunately, the tech sector is more dynamic and vibrant than ever. Innovation has been the driving force behind digitalization thus far. Moving forward, if we hope to reach more ambitious goals for digital transformation, non-stop innovation will continue to be key. So let's innovate non-stop for a better future. Thank you.
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Host27:46
Thank you, Mr. Xu. Next, I'd like to invite Mr. Zhang Ping, Executive Vice President, CEO of Cloud BU, President of Consumer Cloud Service, Huawei, to deliver a keynote speech titled 'Huawei Cloud: Everything as a Service'.
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Zhang Ping28:43
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to meet you via the cloud to discuss Huawei Cloud: Everything as a Service.
Let's take a look at the MGI Industry Digitization Index China. Finance, telecom, internet, and media are industry leaders in digitalization. They have extensively adopted digital technologies such as cloud, AI, and 5G in R&D, manufacturing, procurement, sales, service, and HR. Their product innovation speed has increased by over 50 percent, and their production efficiency by over 30 percent. Their response time to customers has dropped from months to hours and minutes.
We are also pleased to see that industries such as utilities, government, oil, transportation, healthcare, mining, and agriculture are embracing digital technologies to launch industry-specific innovations such as new smart grids, smart cities, AI exploration, and smart mining.
Let's take a look at the results of Accenture's latest global survey. Between 2018 and 2021, the leading 10 percent of the world's 8,300 benchmark companies who fully embrace digital technologies achieved a revenue growth rate that is five times that of the lagging 25 percent. The gap is forecast to widen in the future. This means digitalization at a deeper level is the inevitable choice for leading companies to make the leap.
Emergencias is Argentina's top healthcare provider. This year, they migrated consultation, telemedicine, user data management, drug management, and ambulance dispatching systems, among others, to Huawei Cloud. In addition, Emergencias has achieved intelligent scheduling of all medical resources in Buenos Aires through big data, IoT, and AI technologies, including 29 hospitals and hundreds of community health centers, serving 17 million people.
With the IoT devices deployed on ambulances, Emergencias uploads ambulance location information to the cloud in real time and performs unified analysis and scheduling on the cloud based on information such as nearby doctors and healthcare centers, increasing dispatches within three minutes to 95 percent.
Based on databases and AI services on Huawei Cloud, Emergencias has built an intelligent medical data management system, which allows the company to analyze and predict patients' health conditions and customize medical resource allocation solutions for them within 5 seconds. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Emergencias has provided patients with telemedicine and home care services through its remote diagnosis and treatment system on the cloud. With telemedicine plus home care, the company increased its service reach by 120 percent.
Wuliangye is one of China's leading baijiu liquor companies. Based on Huawei Cloud, Wuliangye has launched a comprehensive digital transformation journey from brewing, distribution, to sales. There are more than 100 processes involved in traditional baijiu brewing, which for thousands of years have been carried out based on expertise. Therefore, the production of high-quality baijiu was unstable due to changes in the natural environment.
Today, IoT can be used to upload data such as temperature, acidity, and moisture of the pit to Huawei Cloud in real time, where big data and AI technologies are used to standardize expertise and form the optimal combination of processes, increasing both the raw liquor output and the proportion of premium liquor by more than 30 percent.
During cloud-based distribution, data can be collected from end-to-end, starting from grain origin, packaging materials, production, to distribution. Cloud and AI-based data sourcing and blockchain technologies are used to implement full lifecycle data sourcing from grain to glass, ensuring the authenticity of the Wuliangye baijiu liquor.
During cloud-based sales, Wuliangye efficiently collaborates data of stores, cloud stores, POS, and dashboards to build a unified data foundation, realizing customized product recommendation and well-informed production and distribution planning, as well as increasing its sales in smart stores by 150 percent.
Conch Cement, a leading cement manufacturer both at home and abroad, actively embraces digitalization by deploying data collection, real-time optimization, and BI report systems on Huawei Cloud. Through collaborative innovation of 5G plus cloud plus AI, Conch Cement has realized smart factories and green industries.
For a 5,000-ton-a-day production line, the traditional production control system has up to 124 parameters, including valve temperature, water flow, and stacking, which required 32 workers to make dynamic adjustments every 30 minutes. Today, AI services of Huawei Cloud have been introduced to implement automatic parameter prediction. Only four workers are required, and the efficiency has been improved by eight times. In addition, more accurate parameter adjustment can be implemented, leading to 6 percent lower energy consumption and a 10 million USD annual cost saving.
We've witnessed the tremendous value of digital transformation from these pioneering companies in different industries. However, we wonder why the success of digital transformation varies among different companies. If a company understands digitalization as an extension only of its existing IT infrastructure and hence keeps expanding data centers, buying more offline software, hiring more software outsourcing personnel, or optimizing service systems separately, then the road to digital transformation will be very difficult.
In the intelligent world of the future, what is crucial to successful digitalization, in our view, is to think cloud native and act cloud native. In the future, all equipment, devices, and sensors will be connected and digital. All infrastructure and applications should and will be cloud-based. Applications that can be migrated to cloud should be done so first and foremost. AI should be embraced, and data should play an important role in business decisions.
Simply put: fully digital, fully cloud-based, AI-driven, and everything as a service. The objective of Huawei Cloud is everything as a service.
First, infrastructure as a service. Based on Huawei Cloud's global data centers and acceleration networks, Huawei provides one global network with consistent access experience, enabling customers to quickly reach the whole world with their services.
Second, technology as a service. In 2021, Huawei's R&D investment in various fields will exceed 130 billion RMB. How will we ensure Huawei's R&D investment serves more companies? How do we enable companies to reduce R&D costs by not having to build what is already available? We believe that the best path is to transform technologies into services on Huawei Cloud. For example, cloud native container cluster scheduling, AI computing frameworks and algorithms, search, maps, databases, 3D UHD audio and video encoding and decoding, fully automated development and test pipelines, blockchain, 5G network planning and optimization, and autonomous driving will all become API services on Huawei Cloud.
Third, expertise as a service. We will work with our partners to distill successful experience and best practices in digital transformation in various industries on Huawei Cloud to build industry application platforms and process platforms, thus helping more industry customers embrace digital transformation and accelerate growth.
In terms of infrastructure as a service, Huawei Cloud will continue expanding global data centers and networks to provide customers, partners, and developers with one global network that provides consistent experience. Over the past year, in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, we launched two new regions of Kuala Lumpur and Abu Dhabi. Today, I'm
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Eric Xu37:21
Very pleased to announce that Huawei Cloud has officially launched two new regions: Mexico and Ulankachina. In addition, we are planning for multiple more regions around the world. Today, the number of Huawei Cloud AZs worldwide has increased from 45 to 61, covering more than 170 countries and regions.
As Huawei Cloud's largest rendering base in the world, the Ulanka region provides incredible computing power that enables one image to be rendered by 10,000 cores. A 90-minute 3D movie that used to take 6 months for rendering now takes only two weeks. I'm also pleased to see that partners in the film and television production industries, such as X-Super Zone, VSO China, and The More VFX, have used over 300,000 core computing power for cloud rendering. We believe these cloud services will fundamentally transform the production process and cycle of the film and television industry.
In addition to computing, storage, and network services, audio and video global network services have become a basic requirement of many digital applications. Last year, 73% of global network traffic was video, and in-app voice interaction has increased by 70 percent. In certain regions, human-device voice interaction accounts for more than 50 percent of the total. Huawei has more than 30 years of experience in audio and video coding and decoding, real-time transmission, and switching. To better serve industries and digital applications in need, we are turning these technologies into cloud services for customers, partners, and developers around the world.
Today, I officially release the Spark RTC total seamless media experience. Spark RTC covers more than 170 countries with reliability up to 99.99% and latency of within 200 milliseconds. What does a latency of 200 milliseconds mean? As we know, the average response time of humankind is 280 milliseconds. This means that with Spark RTC cloud services, you will not only be able to have remote video conferences, online classrooms, live broadcast, and VOD, but also have musicians in different countries performing live concerts on the cloud.
Next, let's enjoy Zhang Mingwei's 'Hope' played by Lin Khali, a young violinist, together with musicians from China, Germany, and France via Huawei Cloud.
To provide customers across the globe with better experience, we have selected competent and respected local industry leaders to build partner clouds and build a global cloud alliance. Customers and partners can access the whole world with one account, one interface, and one invoice. Today, I am honored to invite Mr. Christoph Ozar, head of Orange Cloud in APAC, to share with you the story of Flexible Engine and Huawei Cloud helping customers develop globally.
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Christoph Ozar41:10
I'm Christoph, head of Orange Cloud in APAC. It's my pleasure to have this opportunity to share some stories of Flexible Engine. Flexible Engine is the key partner of Huawei Cloud in Europe and all around the world. We are the top one sovereign cloud service provider in France and Europe. Orange is also rated as a leader in the APAC telecom cloud market by GlobalData. With this strong partnership between Orange and Huawei, your data is in the cloud operated by your Orange team and hosted in Orange secure data centers located in France, Europe, and all around the world. Flexible Engine cloud is definitely the central piece securely supporting all our solutions, helping customers on their digital transformation and helping them to grow on IoT, for example, network security, big data, contact center, CDN, and many others.
Flexible Engine shares the same cloud platform and infrastructure with Huawei Cloud. Thanks to the Cloud Alliance, you can deploy your service in Asia, in Europe, but also in Africa with one single IT cloud supplier, one customer space, one support team, and one single contract. Wherever you choose to expand, your data is always hosted in accordance with local and global regulation, for instance, GDPR in Europe. Flexible Engine, your open, secure public cloud supporting your business worldwide with Orange and Huawei.
One example: Media is a world-leading technology company with global expansion. It has now established a global platform of more than 200 subsidiaries. But behind this amazing speed of globalization, there were dozens of fragmented systems together with data. One of the challenges Media was facing was to centrally manage its infrastructure. When Media met Flexible Engine, the situation improved. All the system and the data in one cloud, from APAC to Europe to US, in one single cloud with one network all around the world. We fueled their growth in global business. Media even reduced the language barrier and improved the management cost. There is a clear overall picture of its global state, allowing customers to focus on their core business, software, and IoT technology innovation, on robotic automation, for example, or smart supply chain.
Another example: Suez is a smart water company, a large French multinational providing water management, waste management, transformation, and energy services. It is a Fortune 500 company with more than 160,000 employees around the world. The subsidiary that we helped is one of the world's three largest water service providers. Terabyte-level data increase every year and data loss made the company decide to migrate all the system and data into the cloud. But you know, in Europe, data migration needs to be carefully addressed. The GDPR alone has 99 clauses and a fine up to 20 million euros. As the French sovereign cloud, Flexible Engine has passed the stringent security certification in Europe, covering security management, data security, privacy protection, and legal compliance. It fully complies with Europe data protection and data processing standards. So not only the business and the data stability increased to 99.99%, the cloud transformation also helped the customer to shorten the business time to market and improve the operational efficiency of the enterprise.
Companies' global expansion will encounter a series of problems such as network isolation, regulation compliance, and local services. With Flexible Engine, all of these constraints are solved. Flexible Engine, the global public cloud to innovate and secure your data. Leverage secure global cloud resources with complete autonomy. Companies thrive on innovation. We work to shape yours. Thank you.
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Eric Xu46:18
Thank you very much, Christoph. Technological innovation requires a long period of time and intensive investment. Take 5G as an example. Huawei started related research as early as 2009, when 4G licenses were not even issued in China. In 2019, the world's first 5G commercial network was launched. From early research to commercial use, we've invested billions of dollars over the 10 years. For companies as a whole, it would be wonderful if they did not need to build what's already available in technological innovation, but instead use the world's leading digital technologies through cloud services, just like water and electricity. While we will continue opening up the achievements reaped by 100,000 engineers and tens of billions of dollars of investment each year, we will provide foundational technologies such as OS, database, AI, compiler, codec, and algorithm to customers and developers from a wide variety of industries through cloud services to make innovations within reach.
Imagine how much the development efficiency of applications and services will be improved if developers implemented core services with only a small amount of code and did not need to worry about server, OS, database maintenance, or traffic limits. Serverless can help us achieve these goals. Today, we bring the new Huawei Cloud FunctionGraph, a function computing service which is based on Huawei's distributed parallel development framework and has a built-in data system and supports stateful functions. Compared with stateless functions, the FunctionGraph can directly access data, reducing the read-write latency by 10 times, greatly expanding the application scope of serverless.
The global biopharmaceutical sector has stepped up investment in the wake of COVID-19. In cooperation with SIMM, we officially released the Huawei Cloud Pangu Drug Molecular Model today, hoping to revolutionize the efficiency of new drug research and development. This model learns the structure of 1.7 billion chemicals and performs deep characterization of small molecule compounds. It can efficiently generate novel compounds, support target protein matching, predict compound properties, and optimize the selected lead drugs to achieve AI-assisted drug design throughout the process. The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University discovered a new broad-spectrum antimicrobial using the Huawei Cloud Pangu Drug Molecule Model, shortening the lead compound discovery cycle from years to one month. I am convinced that the Pangu Drug Molecule Model will contribute further to safeguarding human health.
Pangu Large Model is also applied in the financial sector. Next, I'd like to invite Mr. Chen Haining, General Manager, IT Department, SPDB, to share with you the practice of Pangu Large Model in the financial sector. Now, please join me in welcoming Mr. Chen Haining, General Manager, IT Department, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, to give a speech: Bolstering Digital Innovation in Finance.
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Chen Haining50:23
Respected guests, it's my great honor to attend Huawei Connect 2021. The theme of this conference is 'Dive into Digital'. In finance digitalization, SPDB and Huawei have carried out many important joint innovations. Today, based on our practices, I will talk about how to promote digital finance innovation in the digital and intelligent era. At last year's Huawei Connect, SPDB and Huawei jointly released the white paper on 'Bank of Things'. Bank of Things has three features: first, build new financial service infrastructures to connect things, that is, focus on scenarios and find more touchpoints with customers; second, take intelligent things as the core and create new and intelligent ways for interactions; and third, based on the massive data connected by the IoT, develop a risk control system enabled by digital twins, digital identity, and digital credit system.
Bank of Things may be implemented in many scenarios, for example, in warehousing and logistics, agriculture and breeding, and smart tourism and services. It can capture customers' requirements in real time and provide embedded financial services based on IoT. This is one of the important measures taken by SPDB to promote digital finance innovations.
As industries are going digital, we have seen that warehousing is a breakpoint and a pain point of digitalization. Starting from movable property financing and taking it as the entry point for the Bank of Things, we and Huawei jointly built SPDB Fan Warehouse. As we all know, the traditional movable platform business has many pain points, such as poor management due to untraceable goods source, or because of ethical issues of oversight, companies' gold turned into copper, oil turned into water. This is mainly because of lacking digital means, which leads to high cost of process oversight, and oversight is a mere formality. And there is also a lack of disposal platform; goods can hardly be monetized.
SPDB Fan Warehouse deploys sensors at the warehouse to record information of things, matches the inbound goods with the loans, and links the payment with outbound goods. So goods are effectively controlled and oversight is easier. Through the integration of trade information, sensing information, and logistics information, the ownership is clarified, valuation is accurate, and disposal is efficient. Logistics flow, business flow, capital flow, and information flow are integrated as one.
As logistics warehouses are digitalized by deploying intelligent IoT devices and introducing AI capabilities and multiple multi-dimensional data verification, we can turn a warehouse into a financial warehouse. Every alarm is traceable, every object is identifiable, and each item is trustworthy. Extend the financial services to warehouse on-site management and business processes. With the visual capabilities of the Huawei Cloud Pangu Large Models, we can identify the type and number of containers. In practice, there are around 100 types of containers in the warehouse. Using traditional AI modeling to identify these containers requires a large amount of samples and labeling. Huawei Cloud Pangu Large Models can greatly reduce the workload of sample collection and labeling and therefore shorten the project cycle.
At the inbound and outbound nodes, we deployed Huawei's distributed RFID solution. It is featured by separated receiving transmission, continuous networking, and easy deployment. It enables dynamic and real-time stock taking. The advanced multi-antenna receiver algorithm is used to ensure high accuracy and can meet the requirements of the financial industry. Warehouse is a complex environment; many sensors are required to obtain multi-dimensional data. Digital twin technologies are used to verify data and perform comprehensive risk analysis on the goods, assets, warehousing operations, personnel, and environment. We also deployed Huawei's IoT platform to help manage the access of intelligent objects in various financial scenarios, ensuring the trustworthiness of devices and data.
In SPDB Fan Warehouse, we can see that when forklifts enter the warehouse, the Pangu Large Models can count the goods stacks and verify the codes, weight, and the trade background data to ensure the authenticity of the goods. And each stack of goods will form a pledged unit after entering the warehouse. Customers can conduct inventory financing through SPDB's online banking and withdraw cash online. We all know that industry finance needs to dive into business scenarios. Currently, we are cooperating with a leading company in the cold chain industry, OIG. Next, the CFO of OIG, Ms. Wei Yingjie, will share with us their business operations. Please welcome.
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Wei Yingjie56:39
Hello everyone, I'm Wei Yingjie from OIG. Thank you, Haining, and thank Huawei for giving me the opportunity to speak at HC. OIG is the first one in the frozen product domain to achieve end-to-end industry integration in China. It is capable of entry and traceability. It has already covered 100% of the upstream overseas factories, 100% of the domestic access ports, and over two-thirds of downstream dealers. OIG has been working on the imported frozen goods for more than 10 years, and we know financing for small and micro enterprises in this industry is difficult and expensive. We also know that banks rely on traditional credit means, can hardly break information silos, or achieve effective control. Therefore, in the SPDB Fan Warehouse project, we assisted SPDB to push end-to-end trade data and dynamically monitor the capital flow to ensure the clarity and traceability of the bank's funds. In addition, SPDB can also rely on the nationwide goods distribution channels of OIG to assure payment collection and reduce risks of goods disposal.
OIG, together with SPDB, Huawei, and partners, through the SPDB Fan Warehouse project, will serve more small and micro customers in our industry, helping more companies to use the bank's funds, combining the bank's funds with the high-quality services of OIG to effectively reduce the circulation time and cost, benefiting the consumers with high-quality agricultural products at the best prices, and contributing to the steady development of China's agricultural products industry. Thank you.
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Chen Haining58:39
SPDB Fan Warehouse is an attempt to implement digital finance. It is also a comprehensive solution that combines financial and non-financial services. In the process, we deeply understand the special requirements of the enterprise customers, which drive us to constantly think about and transform our business logic and reconstruct our technical capabilities to better embrace the trend of industry digitalization. We are also looking forward to working with more partners like Huawei and OIG to build a more convenient industry finance platform. Thank you.
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Eric Xu59:29
Thank you, Mr. Chen Haining. Digitalized enterprises can abstract complex business and operation problems into mathematical problems. After that, variables and constraints affecting complex business problems are obtained through global digital sensing and multi-domain system data alignment, which will lead to the finding of optimal solutions globally or locally. For example, cargo loading in transportation and logistics, urban transportation route planning, and production scheduling can be turned into equation solving involving tens of thousands, millions, and tens of millions of variables. To solve such complex mathematical problems, we need one foundational technology: solver. Today, I officially release the Huawei Cloud OptVerse AI Solver, which combines operations and AI, setting a new bar for operations optimization.
It breaks the limit of solving scale, supporting the solving of 100 million variable problems. It breaks the limit of solving speed; the distributed parallel acceleration technology improves the computing speed by 100 times. It breaks the limit of modeling efficiency; from manual modeling to AI intelligent modeling, the modeling efficiency is up by 30 times. It breaks the limit of solver efficiency; from manual parameter setting to AI-based adaptive tuning, the solver efficiency is up by 30 percent. In the Hans Mittlemann benchmark of simplex LP solvers, Huawei Cloud's OptVerse AI Solver ranks number one. Next, Mr. Wu Chung, Vice President, Tianjin Port Holdings, will share with us how Tianjin Port uses the solver to optimize scheduling.
Databases are the cornerstone of enterprise core transaction services and critical data processing. Huawei has been making strategic investment in GaussDB series databases for more than 10 years. Currently, GaussDB has been put into commercial use by more than 1,500 key customers, including financial institutions, governments, enterprises, and internet companies. Take the most demanding financial industry as an example; GaussDB has been adopted by China's four major state-owned banks and a number of joint-stock banks and other top customers in the industry. Today, we release three upgrades to the GaussDB. First, more power for complex queries: 90% of logic computing is performed at the distributed storage layer. In the TPC-H test, the performance of GaussDB is up to 34 times that of competitors. Second, second-level and non-intrusive scaling. Third, the cloud-native multi-master architecture supports from single-node access to 16-node writes.
Blockchain technology has seen rapid development in recent years and has been applied in several industries. However, blockchain faces challenges related to high performance and a large scale, which have been the biggest barriers to blockchain implementation in industries. Today, we bring the new Huawei Cloud Blockchain Service with the novel blockchain engine. One single chain supports 50,000 TPS, improving the throughput by 10 times, and supports 10,000 nodes, increasing the number of participants by 100 times. We are also opening up DCI, the blockchain-based digital copyright protection service, which can provide copyright protection for tens of thousands of content creators. One of our e-commerce partners uses Huawei Cloud's new blockchain technology to conduct cross-border tracing of red wine production, transit, inspection, and customs clearance data throughout the life cycle, ensuring the authenticity of the source and allowing consumers to buy with confidence. They will apply blockchain technology to the cross-border transaction of more goods categories, such as beef and honey.
For customers who have strong requirements for cloud but need to deploy it on their own premise, Huawei provides Huawei Cloud Stack. Today, I officially release Huawei Cloud Stack 8.1. In the new version, 8 services are added, including AI inference, blockchain, IoT, big data governance, workspace, and enterprise operation analysis, bringing service innovation in more scenarios for customers of Huawei Cloud Stack. In addition, a remote maintenance center is provided for over 50 percent higher efficiency.
State Grid Chongqing Electric Power Company is the first customer of AI services of HCS 8.1. They used AI inference to realize UAV intelligent inspection of high-voltage transmission lines in mountainous areas. Manual inspection in the past that involved climbing of the towers took 16 days to complete. Today, the UAV inspection takes only two days, with efficiency up by 10 times and the line failure rate down by 60 percent. Currently, Huawei Cloud Stack provides more than 80 cloud services in 12 categories, which boasts the widest range of hybrid cloud services.
During Huawei Connect 2020, Huawei released the Intelligent Twins, a shared reference architecture for governments and enterprises. The Intelligent Twins is an open and shared ecosystem based on cloud and with AI as the core. Over the past year, Huawei Cloud has continuously enhanced its openness, served developer innovations, and aggregated more partners. Today, I have an important announcement. Please watch the video.
Kaitian, the MacroVerse, is the industry path of Huawei Cloud. We hope to distill Huawei's valuable experience in collaborative innovation and digital transformation with various industries around the world on the cloud platform, turn them into callable API services, and open to developers in the industry, so that developers do not need to build from scratch. Instead, developers can focus more on business value creation. Huawei Cloud MacroVerse PaaS provides five digital engines: payment, search, browsing, map, and ads. It provides the HMS Core and AppGallery Connect for mobile developers. Mobile apps developed based on Huawei Cloud can be released to Huawei AppGallery with one click. Cloud services that tailor innovation to industry-specific scenarios are provided in nine industries, including industrial, ride, retail, healthcare, interactive media, and H&C. There are 128 kits and over 20,000 APIs included.
Let me give you details. Five digital engines provide services, support, and ecosystem that spans 170+ countries and regions. Payment engine supports four types of global mobile payment services. Partners' applications can obtain payment capabilities in multiple modes after being integrated with the payment engine, which is the basis for partners' business success. Petal Search is a mobile-first search engine that supports over 70 languages, providing efficient access to various services and information in applications. We also provide Search Kit for enterprises and application developers. The browsing engine provides users with intelligent and instant information acquisition and a content service experience. The map engine provides more than 20 capabilities, including unique outdoor high-precision capabilities, accurate floor identification, and positioning. These capabilities enable partners to build innovative mobile, web, and cross-platform applications. The ads engine provides a one-stop ad service platform worldwide, providing efficient traffic monetization services for partners and accurate ads placement, and has been integrated in more than 24,300 applications outside China.
Have you experienced the AR map supported by Huawei Cloud in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang? Raise your phone and take a 3D real-time immersive tour of the incredible Mogao Grottoes. When you come to Cave 257, the Deer of Nine Colors will walk down the steps and take photos with you, your friends, and family. This is the charm of Huawei's HEART. With visual technology, Huawei HEART can transform the physical world into 3D point clouds consisting of 4 billion points per square kilometer. With high-precision spatial computing, HEART can realize centimeter-level 3D real-time visual positioning. Together with AR, the HEART tool can incorporate 2D or 3D digital information into any physical space, achieving deep integration between the physical and the digital worlds. Huawei's HEART Cloud service has been applied in more than 20 scenarios, including museums, shopping malls, historical sites, tourism, and exhibition halls, with fascinating experience. We also welcome more partners to use HEART Cloud service to create exceptional experience for users and customers.
As many people know, Huawei Cloud WeLink originates from Huawei's digital office practices and has served customers in various industries after its release. The mission of WeLink is building a secure, intelligent, and open digital office platform for all scenarios. In China, it has served 180 Fortune 500 companies. Today, WeLink has undergone a major upgrade. Based on Spark RTC, the global real-time audio and video service on Huawei Cloud, WeLink integrates core applications such as collaborative office, WeLink Meeting, within Desktop, Huawei Mobile Cloud, and email to build an open office ecosystem in all scenarios, enabling employees to communicate in a timely manner, making work more efficient, and creating better team collaboration experience. In addition, WeLink offers new security features for enterprises, including data shields, secure tunnels, secure fences, and secure communications. It will be available in more countries around the world in November.
Huawei Cloud has built a new digital media pipeline, reconstructing and automating the entire process of film production, such as composition, editing, modeling, rigging, drivers, and rendering. Based on service capabilities such as cloud desktop, cloud rendering, and video AI, filmmakers around the world can collaborate seamlessly and efficiently, greatly improving production efficiency and shortening the production time of 4K HD programs from weeks to less than 24 hours, making it possible to produce and broadcast on the same day. Shanghai Mirror Pictures is our joint innovation partner and among the first customers of the digital media pipeline. Let's now listen to Mr. Jiang Changrong, Chairman of the company, to share the joint innovation achievements of both parties.
It is worth mentioning that based on the digital media pipeline, we have built Yun Shun, the first digital employee on Huawei Cloud, using automatic AI modeling, AI voice driver, and AI rendering acceleration. As a new employee, she has just joined Huawei. I'm going to invite this special guest now.
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Yun Shun1:24:04
Hi everyone, I am Yun Shun, the first digital employee on Huawei Cloud.
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Eric Xu1:24:10
Hello, Yun Shun, welcome to Huawei Cloud. I heard you have excellent learning capability and creativity, so I'm going to test you. Can you explain the 'one global network for audio and video services' I mentioned in a creative way?
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Yun Shun1:24:25
No problem. Huawei Cloud builds a global audio and video network based on more than 2,500 nodes, providing ultra-low latency and smooth audio and video experience. One global network with consistent experience. MacroVerse has come, but latency and instability remain chain challenges. Think and act cloud native. One network and global connectivity for uninterrupted services.
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Eric Xu1:24:54
You are great. Look forward to more of your wonderful performances.
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Yun Shun1:24:58
Thank you. I will keep improving myself based on Huawei Cloud capabilities for more better services. Stay tuned. See you next time. Bye.
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Eric Xu1:25:11
In its first 30 years of history, Huawei has reshaped the world's connectivity. In the next 30 years, we will build a cloud foundation for an intelligent world. Infrastructure as a service, making services globally accessible. Technology as a service, making innovation within reach. Expertise as a service, allowing excellence to be replicated. In the wake of industry digitalization, there is never a lack of opportunities. What's more important are choice and action. Think cloud native, act cloud native, dive into digital, everything as a service. Thank you all.
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Host1:25:47
Thanks to all of our guests for their wonderful sharing. That's all for today. Thank you for listening, and we're looking forward to having you with us in the upcoming events.