Most people don’t embrace new things quickly, but we seem to have made an exception for Artificial Intelligence (AI): We have welcomed AI into our lives, almost unconsciously.
Examples of AI in our daily lives are easy to find. Some of us clock in every day at work by having our faces scanned; checkpoint cameras in every corner of the city are making traffic more efficient and orderly; and many people can hardly even drive today without a voice navigation app in front of them.
The whole world is becoming increasingly intelligent, and IT infrastructure, as an important force driving the intelligent trend, is no exception.
An Intelligent Infrastructure Heralds a Brand New Future
Intelligent applications face obstacles that can only be overcome by using intelligent technology, tools, and methods. The most-important responsibility of the new-generation IT infrastructure is to support and promote intelligent applications. In the meantime, the infrastructure itself must constantly reach for higher intelligence by leveraging cutting-edge concepts, components, and technology.
IT infrastructure is moving towards the 3.0 era, that is, intelligent infrastructure. The previous generation of infrastructure, 2.0, focused on how to connect the world, while 3.0 focuses on how to understand the world. Today, as machine learning and AI are penetrating every sector of our society, we need to fundamentally rethink the infrastructure architecture, tools, and development practices.
IDC once made an analogy explaining the relationship between AI and the IT infrastructure: If AI applications are super racing cars then infrastructure is their engine. However, this engine must be purposefully customized and optimized for AI applications. For example, widely used deep learning applications pose new challenges to the underlying infrastructure with increasing demands on efficiency and computing performance. General-purpose servers that use CPU computing cores may not be able to keep up with these growing demands. In response, a variety of computing acceleration technologies are emerging, such as GPU and FPGA. IDC predicts that China’s GPU server market will maintain three-digit growth in the next two or three years.
Obviously, AI servers are much more than just support for GPU or FPGA. Rather, the entire infrastructure must be redesigned in order to keep up. After 60 years of groundwork, the conditions needed for AI to take off, including computational power, data, and algorithms, are almost ready.
Gartner predicts that 25 percent of enterprises will invest in and deploy AI projects by 2022. To meet the needs of intelligent applications, we must make the necessary infrastructure breakthroughs in cloud computing, big data, storage, intelligent computing, and more.
Besides leveraging an intelligent infrastructure to support intelligent applications, enterprise IT teams may also use AI and other new technologies for infrastructure operations and maintenance. Gartner predicts that, among companies that are unable to effectively integrate AI into their data centers, 30 percent will not be able to make profits by 2020.
The impact of AI will penetrate every sector of our society. In order to keep up, the infrastructure must be revolutionized in terms of theories, architectural design, hierarchy, and the specific techniques used. This cannot be achieved simply by adding a GPU or a type of algorithm to legacy servers. An intelligent infrastructure must include an efficient platform, automation technology, advanced data processing, analytics, and intelligent scheduling and O&M. An intelligent infrastructure heralds in a brand-new future.
Who Holds the Golden Key to Unlock the Potential of AI?
Vendors and users alike are exploring ways to unlock the full potential of AI. “Intelligent IT” is the answer Huawei provides at the current stage.
Intelligent IT is a guiding principle for Huawei’s IT business. It is in alignment with Huawei’s corporate vision to bring digital to every person, home, and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. As such, Huawei’s intelligent IT strategy will be an important part of the company’s long-term planning and will be backed by extensive company resources.
Intelligent IT further clears the path toward an intelligent future. By consolidating, automating, and infusing intelligence into the entire IT infrastructure, Intelligent IT enables intelligent industry applications and helps enterprises rapidly and smoothly transform themselves digitally.
In the intelligent IT era, the IT infrastructure is not just an important pillar for business growth, but also a major driving force behind value creation. Founded on this consensus, the focus on IT infrastructure is gradually transforming from higher resource utilization to better enabling business growth, and from cost efficiency to value creation. IT infrastructure is transforming into a value center, rather than a cost center.
In the past year, Huawei launched multiple ground-breaking new products and solutions that drive AI adoption across many different fields.
In cloud computing, Huawei launched a new-generation full-stack cloud solution, and deployed the industrial cloud platform ProMACE 2.0 by working with Petro-CyberWorks Information Technology Co. Ltd., as well as an AI vision platform by working with Intellifusion.
In big data, Huawei launched the converged data warehouse solution GaussDB, an e-Government cloud big data solution, and a policing cloud big data solution. Huawei also partnered with YITU Technology to jointly launch a face recognition big data solution.
In storage, Huawei launched a full range of products, from high-end all-flash storage systems (OceanStor Dorado18000 V3) and hybrid flash storage systems (OceanStor V5), to high-performance SAP HANA TDI solutions and the brand-new FusionROBO solution for enterprise branch management.
In intelligent computing, Huawei launched the innovative Atlas intelligent computing platform, MDC600 mobile data center, KunLun V5 mission-critical server, and a Microsoft Azure Stack-based hybrid cloud solution. Huawei also joined Veeam in launching the FusionCube HCI cloud DR solution.
In intelligent security, pioneering the brand-new concept of Software-Defined Camera (SDC), Huawei launched the lightweight video cloud + software-defined camera package solution and the iCAN intelligent index system.
With its Intelligent IT strategy, Huawei is materializing cutting-edge concepts into concrete products and solutions, and is growing a rich ecosystem that includes numerous partners from every industry.
Huawei’s intelligent infrastructure and services have earned wide recognition among industry customers. In 2018, Huawei was again placed in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for General-Purpose Disk Arrays, with further enhanced strategic integrity and execution.
According to Sino-Bridges Research and Consulting Ltd., in China, Huawei enjoys the highest customer recognition as a strategic partner and IT vendor for digital transformation. More than 70 percent of respondents believe Huawei will make an impact on their company’s digital transformation in the next three years.
For its global market performance, technological advantages, and wide-ranging practices, Huawei’s FusionCube also made it into Gartner’s Magic Quadrant as a challenger in 2018.
Huawei was highlighted in Forrester’s “New Tech: Computer Vision Software For AI In China, Q1 2018” report for its FusionInsight big data solution as a major player in China’s AI computer vision software market in terms of sustainable competitiveness.
Accelerating Digital Transformation with Intelligence
Huawei is unique among intelligent infrastructure vendors in that 1) it has a clear and forward-looking strategy; 2) it offers holistic solutions with a cloud-edge-device synergy and is able to materialize its technical advantages through widely deployed Huawei clouds; and 3) it is able to quickly convert theories into practices. In the course of digital transformation, Huawei is able to fully utilize the power of intelligence to create value for customers.
Shanghai Metro Built an Intelligent, Comprehensive Operation Coordination Center (COCC) Using Huawei’s Full-Stack Cloud Solution
Huawei’s Full-Stack Cloud Solution is capable of unified management of dispersed resources; efficient collaboration between clouds and networks; and allows the development of tailored solutions to meet the needs of specific industry scenarios. The solution supports sustainable growth for enterprises as well as other types of organizations and meets the demands for service lifecycle management.
Shanghai Metro used Huawei’s Urban Rail Cloud, which is based on Huawei’s full-stack cloud architecture, to upgrade its COCC. Shanghai Metro built the C3 dispatching and command center that integrates the COCC (ETC), seven networked sub-centers, and the OCCs of 21 lines. This center facilitates fast exchange and unified management of application data and other information.
BYD Auto, a Leader in New Energy Vehicles, Improves IT Efficiency by Using Huawei Storage
BYD deployed Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage system to seamlessly replace its old storage system that consisted of mechanical disks.
Without changing the existing network architecture, database, host, ERP software, or O&M mode, BYD’s new storage system significantly accelerated read/write I/Os for the ERP and BW systems, and improved overall system efficiency.
BYD’s new storage system maintains less than 1 millisecond of storage latency for the company’s ERP. Combined with optimizations in ERP search criteria and the upper-layer platform, BYD’s new storage system reduces the time needed to extract data from the BW data warehouse by 66 percent, and greatly improves system efficiency.
China Merchants Bank Increases Business Agility with Huawei’s FusionInsight Big Data Solution
Huawei’s FusionInsight big data solution for China Merchants Bank (CMB) covers big data collection, storage, processing, mining, and other lifecycle services. With this solution, CMB is able to quickly roll out innovative services, such as predicting micro-loan customer acquisition, real-time credit investigation, and precision marketing for wealth management products. The solution helps CMB reduce credit investigation time from weeks to seconds.
Intelligence has become a new gene of Huawei IT solutions. Huawei’s IT Product Line is able to integrate innovative AI technology into cloud data centers to enable intelligent data mining and analytics. The intelligent solution promotes application innovation across various industries, shortens the Time-To-Market (TTM), and improves operational efficiency, helping customers respond to uncertainties in markets with guaranteed resources and cutting-edge technology.
Huawei IT products and solutions have been trusted by customers from more than 150 countries and regions around the world, and have become a new engine and benchmark for enterprise digital transformation.
Huawei’s storage, intelligent computing, big data, and cloud computing all achieved high growth rates in 2018, and continue to rise through industry rankings in their respective market segments. Huawei IT will continue to drive business intelligence by providing end-to-end intelligent infrastructure solutions.