Huawei said on Thursday that the Chinese technology giant will expand its cloud computing presence in South Africa, with a new “availability zone” to be built in Cape Town in the next year or two.

That’s the word from Stone He, president of Huawei Cloud in Southern Africa, who was speaking to journalists during a virtual media briefing.

South Africa, He said, is “quite important” for Huawei’s global cloud computing road map as it eyes grabbing market share from “hyperscale” cloud market leaders Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

In 2020, Huawei Cloud generated revenue of US$5-million from the region – mostly from South Africa, but also with small contributions from Nigeria and Kenya. Though that is a relatively small amount of money, He made it clear that Huawei has big ambitions in South Africa – and the broader region – and wants to be a top-two market player in future.

Durban, too?

Huawei launched its first “availability zone”, or data centre location, in South Africa in 2019. It followed this with a second zone, also in Johannesburg, in 2020, with the Cape Town zone to follow soon. He hinted that Durban could also get an availability zone in future.

The company will work closely with its South African partners to take its cloud services to market. In line with this, it plans to spend considerable time training partner employees in its cloud services. — © 2021 NewsCentral Media