Compwire: A New Player on the Stage of Digital Transformation

Founded in 1996, Compwire’s main business covers data centers, storage, networks, virtualization, and big data, with an annual sales volume exceeding US$30 million. Compwire sells products across Brazil, and has gained extensive experience through many years of cooperation with enterprise and government customers. Compwire’s strong ICT solution integration, sales, and delivery capabilities have earned it considerable influence in the industry.

Realizing Transformation in Increasingly Competitive Traditional Industries

From 2015 to 2016, Brazil suffered from political instability and a sluggish economy. Rapidly growing vendors, such as Huawei and HDS, brought fierce competition to the traditional storage market. Compwire’s business had declined, because it mainly relied on government customers. Aware of the dilemma, the company recognized that it urgently needed to transform itself.

As more and more industries began undergoing digital transformation, the Brazilian government decided to follow suit, promoting digital and paperless offices. The government also established the Public Safety Department, a new federal department that would build digital cities and Safe Cities to address the security challenges caused by political instability.

In light of these developments, Compwire’s sales volume was declining in the traditional market, while the emerging digital city and Safe City market offered major opportunities for growth. Compwire decided to find new partners, and Huawei was the natural choice for many reasons:

• Huawei had high-quality storage products, and in recent years, its sales growth rate had ranked first in the storage market in Brazil. Huawei also offered portfolios of Internet Protocol (IP), Information Technology (IT), VC, and wireless products. Through working with Huawei, Compwire could expand its business to cover more products.
• Huawei offered comprehensive Safe City solutions, and had deployed the first CloudIVS project in Brazil. Huawei’s advantages in the Safe City market perfectly matched Compwire’s transformation requirements.
• Huawei’s products and solutions covered a wide range, including the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, and inverters. Compwire could leverage the cooperation to partner with enterprises and governments on their digital transformation journeys.
• Huawei had adhered to a strategy of providing products for integration in Brazil, which meant that it sold its Huawei products through local partners. From a long-term perspective, this strategy guaranteed that Compwire would benefit from the cooperation.

From Point to Plane: Realizing Extensive Cooperation

• Getting to know each other through competition: From 2017 to 2018, Huawei Enterprise Business grew quickly in Brazil, especially in the storage market, where Compwire operated. As Compwire and Huawei became competitors in various projects in government and finance, the two companies got to know each other well. As the old Chinese saying goes, “no discord, no concord.”
• High-level contact and partnership establishment: To expand its business in Brazil, Huawei was looking to find partners with strong capabilities. From December 2017 to February 2018, senior executives from Huawei’s Brazil Rep Office visited Compwire, introducing Huawei’s business perspective, the channel strategy of providing products for integration, and Huawei’s strong desire to cooperate with local, professional IT channel partners. Senior executives in Compwire expressed their interest in cooperation.
• Collaborative expansion for major breakthroughs: The partnership is growing stronger. Senior executive from Huawei’s Brazil Rep Office is aiming to participated in biddings, creating a steady Business Plan (BP), guaranteeing the success. Compwire understood Huawei’s partner-oriented strategy, and started to invest in the cooperation, becoming one of Huawei’s Certified Service Partners (CSPs).
• Harvesting the fruits of strategic cooperation: In October 2018, senior executives from Compwire attended HUAWEI CONNECT 2018. After extensive discussions with Huawei Enterprise Business Group executives, the two companies decided to cooperate on storage, networks, and Safe City solutions. They started collaborating more closely, sharing valuable customers, expanding their business, and making breakthroughs in domains such as storage, servers, and private cloud platforms. With the Huawei Dorado all-flash storage’s outstanding performance and low latency, Compwire gained important customers as such the State Labor Court and the State Secretariat of Finance.

A New Vision: Working with Huawei to Become an Important Partner of Enterprise and Government Customers in Digital Transformation

In early 2019, Compwire joined Huawei’s global Partner Advisory Board (PAB). We attended roundtable meetings in China and visited Huawei’s HQ in Shenzhen, as well as R&D centers. The Business Plans (BPs) jointly compiled by Huawei and Compwire have been used to win Named Accounts (NAs) in the government, banking, oil and gas, power, and other sectors. In May, Compwire introduced its cooperation with Huawei at Huawei’s Brazil Channel Eco-Partner Conference, and was named Huawei’s ‘Best IT Partner of the Year.’

We spoke at the conference, stressing the importance of embracing change and collaboration: “We are undergoing deep changes in the technology world, what people call digital transformation, with technologies such as big data, analytics, AI, cloud, and the IoT, among other new and emerging technologies. In this scenario of technology integration, my role and the roles of our executives, is to promote a profound change inside our company. For this strategic moment, we looked for a partner that could provide us a wide portfolio. And all the paths led us to Huawei. Besides a broad product portfolio, we saw at Huawei the opportunity of aggregating a large service portfolio and consulting service from Compwire. In this scenario of digital transformation, many new opportunities have arisen such as the IoT, AI, and smart cities, which have already become a reality for our business. Huawei is not only huge in terms of space, but also immense in terms of developing new technologies. And this is of utmost importance to us.”

Compwire looks forward to continuing to working with Huawei, leveraging Huawei’s product portfolios and ICT solution integration capabilities. Compwire will focus on the data center, big data analytics, the IoT, and Safe City domains, striving to become an important partner of enterprise and government customers on their digital transformation journeys. Huawei has decided to certify Compwire as a solution partner. Following the establishment of the OpenLab in Brazil in June 2019, Huawei and Compwire will collaboratively test and develop solutions in Brazil.

【Partner Testimony】

“In this scenario of digital transformation, many new opportunities have arisen such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Smart Cities, which have already become a reality for our business. Huawei is huge in terms of space and immense in terms of developing new technologies. And this is of utmost importance to us.”

— Marcos Choinski, CEO of Compwire