1.The Huawei Cloud Startup Program is designed to enable SMEs to innovate and grow by providing cost-effective cloud services and go-to-market resources
2.The initiative aims to empower 1,000 startups in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa in the next three years
Working with regional partners, Huawei Cloud launched a Startup Program for the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. The initiative provides SMEs in these regions with Huawei cloud credits, technical support, talent development training, and business resources to drive their growth.
The Huawei Cloud Startup Program was launched on the sidelines of the Huawei Cloud Summit Middle East & Africa 2023 in Dubai. Under the theme of ‘Inspire Innovation with Everything as a Service’, the Summit brought together over 300 government leaders, cloud-native industry experts, and customer representatives from the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa to explore how to make the best out of cloud and the vital role of cloud in driving digital economy growth in the region.
The program demonstrates Huawei’s commitment to building a regional startup ecosystem to empower 1000 startups in the region to innovate and grow on Huawei Cloud by 2025.
The launch ceremony was attended by representatives from the UAE Ministry of Economy, Middle East incubator GEN Asia, Dinarak – Jordan’s licensed payment services provider, Ignite – a non-profit company owned by the Government of Pakistan and administered by the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication, and Kuwait’s startup representatives Eyon TV, One Global, and Empower.
Frank Dai, the President of Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, said, SMEs are the backbone of the regional economy. However, small businesses struggle to digitize their processes, thus missing out on the immense opportunities of the digital economy. Huawei wants to empower regional entrepreneurs with the tools to succeed in the digital age by adopting cloud services; we believe the Huawei Cloud Startup Program is an essential building block for growth in the modern age, and by empowering more SMEs with such programs, we can jointly cultivate a robust technology ecosystem in the region.
The summit also provided an opportunity to explore the latest innovations in cloud-native technologies. Cloud-native has emerged as an essential driver of digital transformation, with Gartner predicting that 95% of digital services will run on cloud-native platforms by 2025. Cloud-native greatly improves productivity and imposes increasing requirements on digital capabilities.
More industries are going digital and many have entered Cloud Native 2.0. The concept of Cloud Native 2.0 was first proposed by Huawei Cloud, and it is a new phase for an intelligent upgrade of enterprises. The move to cloud changes from On Cloud to In Cloud where applications and services are not only migrated to the cloud but also being built on the cloud. Together with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), and industry experts, Huawei Cloud founded Cloud Native Elite Cloud, a global cloud native community, to boost the cloud native ecosystem. In the Cloud Native 2.0 era, a new cloud-native enterprise is no longer a possibility, but a reality.
As a cloud enabler, Huawei Cloud leverages key technologies to support growth across regional industries. The KooVerse global infrastructure of Huawei Cloud that delivers an excellent cloud experience of 50ms latency greatly benefits the industry that requires demanding real-time audio and video services. Meanwhile, CCE Turbo is Huawei Cloud’s flagship container service that runs on a cloud-native infrastructure, helping customers increase their resource utilization by 40%. These technologies, combined with Huawei Cloud’s superb computing capabilities, empower enterprises to become more agile and efficient. Huawei Cloud released the Cloud Native 2.0 Architecture White Paper, aiming to enable local customers with full-stack cloud-native capabilities to take a quantum leap to the future.