Unleashing the Potential of Media & Entertainment Industry with Huawei Cloud

Huawei is a real-economy company with proven digital capabilities and it will continue building the best possible products to serve its customers, partners, and developers in the Middle East, its senior official says.

Roy Luo, Vice-President of Cloud Consulting Solution Sales at Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, said Huawei Cloud has served more than 200 government customers, more than 30 financial customers, and more than 150 Internet and cloud-native customers in the Middle East.

“Huawei will continue operating in the Middle East and leverage our unique strengths in cloud-network-edge-device synergy to bring cutting-edge cloud, AI, and other emerging technologies to the region,” Luo said during an interview.

He said Huawei accords high importance to research and development (R&D) as it allocated CNY161.5 billion, or 25.1 per cent of its annual revenue, on R&D last year. Over the past decade, Huawei has invested more than CNY977.3 billion in R&D.

Excerpts from the interview:

What is the growing trend in the media and entertainment industry?

Media and entertainment industry is a fast-developing industry. It is one of frontier industries that increasingly adopts advanced technologies, such as AI, Cloud and so on.

The whole industry chain can be categorised into two parts, namely content production and content distribution.

For the content production, more and more media companies want to translate the physical world into the digital world, it will highly rely on AI to enhance the efficiency. For the content distribution, ultra-low latency network provides excellence experience based on Cloud technology.

Huawei Cloud has introduced a range of innovative solutions in the media and entertainment industry. Could you provide an overview of these solutions?

In the media and entertainment industry, Huawei has been rooted in the telecommunications sector for over 30 years, having cultivated expertise and extensive capabilities in video coding, network transmission, and distribution.

To improve the content production efficiency in the media and entertainment industry, we introduce Cloud-Native and AI-Powered workspace and rendering farm to streamline design and rendering workflows and enhance creative collaboration.For content distribution, Huawei Cloud comprehensive solution encompasses live-streaming, video on demand (VOD), transcoding, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, to deliver ultimate user experience, in terms of high definition, smooth and low latency. To explore more innovative business model, we provide industries MetaStudio platform to create virtual human and 3D spaces for enterprise and individuals to build their own metaverse.

What are the development strategies and plans of Huawei Cloud in Middle East for media and entertainment industry?

With the accumulation of audio and video expertise acquired over the past two decades, Huawei Cloud has successfully delivered multiple projects for the global media and entertainment industry, including Hunan TV of China, MNC of Indonesia, BBTV of Thailand, and BluTV of Türkiye.

The audio and video technology now is becoming one of the core technologies that fuel industries. Adhering to the strategy of “Everything as a Service”, Huawei Cloud provides cloud native media infrastructure that consists of One Ecosystem; Two Service Types: Content Production and Real-time Interaction; Three Engines: Graphics Engine, Digital Human Engine and Audio and Video Engine; and Four Core Capabilities: Computing, Network, AIGC and Blockchain. This media infrastructure will help unleash the full potential for industries.

We leverage the scenario-specific solutions of our ecosystem partners to enable the digitalization of Middle East media & entertainment industry. Huawei Cloud hopes to help the industry go cloud to shatter industry barriers, and work with partners and customers to bridge the industry gap.

What is Huawei Cloud strategy for 2024 to retain its market share?

So far, Huawei Cloud has served more than 200 government customers, more than 30 financial customers, and more than 150 Internet and cloud-native customers in the Middle East. In 2022, the number of Huawei's higher-value accounts more than doubled in the region.

We will draw from the wealth of experience that we have accumulated worldwide, including our experience in digitalisation, to provide better options to customers and partners in the Middle East. We will help them improve user experience, optimize processes, enable innovation, and unlock new opportunities for growth.

1. Huawei Cloud understands industries. Huawei is a real-economy company with proven digital capabilities. We have advantages in helping other real-economy companies go digital. We provide cloud migration, data import into the lake, and AI enablement for the overall process from R&D to production and supply chains to sales and services. This improves user experience, optimizes efficiency, and enables innovation. For example, in the smart finance domain, automating the generation of monthly operating reports will reduce report generation times from 18 days to 5 days.

2. In addition, we have accumulated rich digital experience in the Internet industry, especially in China, one of the world's largest Internet markets. For example, we help Weibo, the biggest social media platform in China, handle more than 50 traffic bursts every year. This ensures uninterrupted services for the microblogging platform with over 250 million daily average users during major events while supporting the continuous growth of user numbers. Huawei Cloud technology has also helped boost the user conversion rate by more than 20 per cent for Xiaohongshu, a leading e-commerce and social platform in China with 450,000 new posts every day.

3. Furthermore, we are committed to heavy investment in research and development (R&D). In 2022, Huawei's R&D investment reached CNY161.5 billion, 25.1 per cent of its annual revenue. Over the past decade, Huawei has invested more than CNY977.3 billion in R&D. Huawei's R&D investment vastly exceeds that of the average company, ranking fourth in the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. We make full use of our R&D achievements on the cloud and unique strengths in cloud-network-edge-device synergy to provide innovative cloud services for customers, partners, and developers.

4. We also actively fulfill our corporate social responsibilities by supporting local innovation, employment, and talent cultivation.

How is 2023 for Huawei Cloud so far? Any major challenges or milestones achieve during the year?

2023 has been exciting for Huawei Cloud so far. In September this year, we launched the Huawei Cloud Saudi Arabia Region in Riyadh, ushering in a new era of technological progress and economic growth for the region. This is a significant milestone in our contribution in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. This state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure benefits Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Central Asia, and Northern Africa as the core region for Huawei Cloud.

Recently, Huawei has demonstrated the power of AI to make an impactful contribution to humanity. In a Huawei Cloud whitepaper published in Nature magazine, one of the world's top scientific journals, Huawei researchers showcased Pangu-Weather AI that harnesses the power of the cloud to process vast amounts of environmental data worldwide.

By utilising AI algorithms, Pangu can analyse intricate patterns and dynamics within our climate system that were previously inconceivable. With unmatched accuracy, it can identify and predict climate patterns, such as the intensity of storms, sea-level rise, and regional temperature changes. The model enables a 10,000x improvement in prediction speed, reducing global weather prediction from seven days to one hour. This innovation is critical as the world reels from climate change-related extreme weather.

How do you see outlook for media and entertainment industry in 2024 and how Huawei Cloud sees opportunities in this segment?

In the coming future, media and entertainment will be a fast-developing industry that will adopt and rely heavily on advanced technologies like AI, Big data, Cloud and so on. For media content, it is from text, voice to video. The definition of video evolved from SD, HD, 4k and even 8k, the video content production needs more powerful computing, and video content distribution requires more high and ultra-low latency network. Cloud is the one to meet those requirements. Furthermore, AIGC is a hot and popular for media content production as well.

1. Huawei Cloud Workspace represents a leap forward in content creation by enabling seamless and collaborative design. This transformative technology empowers users to efficiently produce content in a cloud-based environment, transcending the limitations of solo digital content creation, with the key advantage lies in its capability to support multiple devices for collaborative design, including PC, laptops, tablets, and more.

2. In the era of artificial intelligence, businesses are striving to augment their content creation capabilities, and Huawei Cloud has responded innovatively with its groundbreaking Pangu digital human model. This model harnesses the power of a substantial foundational AI framework and provides two crucial services: model generation and model-driven content creation. It has undergone extensive pre-training, incorporating over 200,000 hours of audiovisual data. Huawei Cloud's inventive solutions in digital human creation and 3D spaces are reshaping the landscape of the media and entertainment industry. Through the introduction of cost-effective, efficient, and highly adaptable models, Huawei Cloud is establishing a fresh standard for creativity and user engagement.

3. In the contemporary media and entertainment landscape, the pivotal factor for capturing and retaining audiences is the user experience. Huawei Cloud is reshaping the landscape with its comprehensive OTT media solution, fundamentally altering the way online content delivery is experienced. This all-encompassing solution spans live streaming, video on demand (VOD), transcoding, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) services. Huawei Cloud's Ultra-Low Latency Live (LLL) service stands out as a transformative element for live streaming. With a global network of 2,800+ CDN nodes and a bandwidth reserve exceeding 180+, Huawei Cloud's OTT solution ensures the engagement of tens of millions of audiences, delivering a more immersive and interactive experience by reducing delays to a remarkable 800ms or less.

4. In the media and entertainment industry, Huawei, having been rooted in the communications sector, has amassed over 30 years of expertise, boasting a portfolio of more than 1,000 audio-visual algorithm patents. Leveraging extensive capabilities in video coding, network transmission, and distribution, Huawei stands on a robust technological foundation. Drawing upon substantial experience in various vertical industries and a wealth of technological know-how, Huawei Cloud will continue to collaborate with partners and customers, bridging industrial divides and using powerful audio-visual technology innovations to unlock new growth for media and entertainment industry.

What's new Huawei Cloud is going to introduce next year for media and entertainment industry?

In the next five years, Huawei will continue building the best possible cloud-related products to serve customers, partners, and developers in the Middle East. We will step up efforts to empower developers, and develop joint solutions with local partners through the Go Cloud Go Global programme. Huawei Cloud is ready to share its own localisation experience across more than 170 countries and regions, insights into global and regional industries, cloud services and solutions, and global ecosystem. We hope these actions can help to fuel the media & entertainment industry in the region.

Huawei will continue operating in the Middle East and leverage our unique strengths in cloud-network-edge-device synergy to bring cutting-edge cloud, AI, and other emerging technologies to the region. Huawei has accumulated a wealth of experience on digital transformation worldwide, including our own experience to go digital. We will share this experience with Middle East and Central Asia, so that businesses in the country can more effectively improve user experience, optimise processes, reconstruct models, and unlock new opportunities for growth without needing to reinvent the wheel.

Why industry stakeholders prefer Huawei Cloud

Roy Luo, Vice-President of Cloud Consulting Solution Sales at Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, said Huawei Cloud understands industries.

“Huawei is a real-economy company with proven digital capabilities. We have advantages in helping other real-economy companies go digital. We provide cloud migration, data import into the lake, and AI enablement for the overall process from R&D to production and supply chains to sales and services. This improves user experience, optimises efficiency, and enables innovation. For example, in the smart finance domain, automating the generation of monthly operating reports will reduce report generation times from 18 days to five days only,” he said.

In addition, he said Huawei has accumulated a wealth of digital experience in the Internet industry, especially in China, one of the world's largest Internet markets. For example, we help Weibo, the biggest social media platform in China, handle more than 50 traffic bursts every year. This ensures uninterrupted services for the microblogging platform with over 250 million daily average users during major events while supporting the continuous growth of user numbers.

Huawei Cloud technology has also helped boost the user conversion rate by more than 20 per cent for Xiaohongshu, a leading e-commerce and social platform in China with 450,000 new posts every day.

“We are committed to heavy investment in R&D. In 2022, Huawei's R&D investment reached CNY161.5 billion, 25.1 per cent of its annual revenue. Over the past decade, Huawei has invested more than CNY977.3 billion in R&D.

“Huawei's R&D investment vastly exceeds that of the average company, ranking fourth in the 2022 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. We make full use of our R&D achievements on the cloud and unique strengths in cloud-network-edge-device synergy to provide innovative cloud services for customers, partners, and developers.”

— muzaffarrizvi@khaleejtimes.com

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