Huawei, a leading global ICT solutions provider, shared its vision for the future of data centers during its participation at the inaugural Uptime Institute Symposium Middle East, held at the Ritz Carlton Jumeirah Beach, Dubai, last week.
The first such gathering to be held outside of the United States, Uptime Institute Symposium highlighted the opportunities available for telcos to generate new revenue streams by integrating data centers into their business cloud strategy. The invitation-only event also focused on the strategies for deploying reliable data centers that are efficient and responsive to the evolving business environment with the ultimate goal of achieving IT Infrastructure Excellence.
“The Middle East region continues to witness rapid technology advancement as Gulf enterprises and governments continue to adopt a knowledge-based approach to economic sustainability,” said Sun Xiaofeng, Executive Vice President and Head of Marketing and Solution Sales of Huawei Middle East. “This symposium helps end users and technology providers to define the standards that will ensure sustainable improvement in the performance, efficiency and reliability of their business critical infrastructure, especially as they move to a cloud-based infrastructure model.”
During the event, Huawei and Uptime Institute further strengthened their collaboration through signing a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly advance data center innovation in the region and explore opportunities to open up the ecosystem and act as a conduit between carriers and enterprises. As a founding partner, Huawei also shared its insights on the latest industry trends for ‘data center in cloud-sharing’ during a key note speech delivered by Zhang Fan, Chief Solution Architect, at Huawei Global Technical Services.
The one-day event featured senior executives from the Uptime Institute and a number of representatives from leading technology players including Huawei. During the event, speakers shared insights on a number of key topics on data center trends such as risk mitigation, new data center strategies and the future of cloud computing in data centers.
“Uptime Institute is internationally recognized for the creation and administration of the rigorous tier standards and certifications that enable data centers to achieve their mission while mitigating risk,” said Lee Kirby, President of Uptime Institute. “We are delighted to host our first symposium in the Middle East in Dubai, the region’s ICT hub and look forward to working closely with industry leaders like Huawei to help the region’s enterprises drive growth by better leveraging their data center capability.”
During his keynote speech, Zhang Fan highlighted the critical role the cloud plays in the evolution of data centers, stressing the importance of being agile in accessing critical data from multiple locations in real-time to increase the efficiency and flexibility of enterprises in the next era. Fan also urged telcos to consider data centers as part of their offering, indicating that data centers are the next element of future.
“As regional economies continue to achieve industry diversification and digital transformation, traditional data centers will have to evolve into the cloud sphere to accommodate the growing demands for efficient, high-speed data access. Data centers of the future will not be restricted to a particular geographical location, as they will be cloud-based, and will be able to cater to data requests from multiple locations simultaneously and in real-time, offering enterprises the much-needed degree of flexibility and agility in the digital age. For telcos, data centers should be viewed as a natural extension of their cloud business strategy, given that they own the network and therefore better positioned to manage the connectivity,” concluded Sun Xiaofeng.
