Huawei launches cloud communications platform for businesses

CeBIT 2016, Hanover – 5G, the Internet of Things and connected cities will not only play an important role for consumers going about their daily lives but for businesses in driving revenue. Chinese technology giant Huawei wants it to be known it will have its fingers in many, many pies in this new era.

Aside from being heavily involved in the hardware selling side of 5G, smart cities, robotics and the Internet of Things, Huawei also wants a seat at the communications table.

After all, it’s all very well for ‘things’ to be connected in the Internet of Things but people also need to find new ways to connect, face to face, by taking advantage of new technologies.

So this week, Huawei launched a revamped communications platform at CeBIT 2016, hoping to provide a complete cloud-powered communications solution for enterprise customers.

The problem, as Huawei and many others see it, is that business communication is still in the stage of being overly “siloed”, with various platforms having to be used for video calling, video conferencing, voice calling, and call centre management.

“What’s the challenge we’re facing today?” Simon Dai, CTO enterprise communication at Huawei, asked.

“A lot of siloed systems exist today in all sizes of the enterprise. Instant messaging, video conferencing, and so on. All of this represents a different age and year of technology. It’s difficult to manage and integrate, it makes people crazy,” Dai answered.

But Huawei thinks its new platform does away with all of this. Based on Huawei’s open cloud architecture, Huawei’s enterprise cloud communications offering aims to integrate all of these communications together on a single platform.

Enterprises will be able to customise their own communication platform with an on-demand service subscription model, and access the platform from multiple types of endpoints, endpoints such as cameras that are also sold by Huawei.

The solution, according to Huawei’s own figures, can also give buyers the benefit of a 30 percent reduction in total cost ownership thanks to the convergence of the platforms.

Huawei wheeled out a few case studies of its platform already in action. From a national “safe city” in Kenya, through a tele-education initiative in Saudi Arabia, to large banking customers in China, Huawei claims it improves customer experience in the communications sector by using its open, converged cloud communications platform.

As Internet of Things adoption also ramps up, Huawei also sees its solution deployed in smart city command centres and even in connected cars. It’s secure, too, said Huawei speaking to reporters. Currently, the platform is protected by “seven layers” of security in the network, and AES-128 encryption in the application.

“All of these areas require us to develop more in the connectivity zone,” Dai said. “Communications will not be limited to the office. We [must enable] better communications through our technology.”

Effectively, what Huawei is selling on to value-added resellers is an end-to-end product that integrates video, voice, instant messaging and conference calling together to fit various “collaboration scenarios” for all sizes of businesses.

“As the competition is heating up, enterprises need to implement the communication and collaboration across regions, organisations and employees,” said Ma Haixu, president of Huawei’s core network product line.

“Cloud communication enables boundless communication, and it is easy to expand with business growth. This is why cloud communication has become the common choice of more and more enterprises.”