Text/Huang Haifeng
On April 26, at the Huawei Global Analyst Conference (HAS2022), Hu Houkun, Huawei's rotating chairman, shared the question of "where to go" in huawei's future. He pointed out that Huawei will continue to strengthen its innovation capabilities and firmly seize the two major opportunities of digitalization of thousands of industries and the low-carbon development of human society.
Huawei is a 35-year-old company that has maintained rapid growth for many years and has a clear future development strategy, that is, focusing on ICT and smart terminals. However, after encountering external targets in 2019, Huawei's business development such as computing, mobile phones, and chips has encountered challenges. In 2021, Huawei is under pressure, with sales revenue of 636.8 billion yuan, a lot of reduction.
What should Huawei do about this? Do you want to adjust your thinking? We have seen that Huawei has made frequent moves: in 2021, the R&D investment will reach a staggering 143.7 billion yuan, ranking second in the world; attach importance to cloud computing innovation, help governments and enterprises quickly go to the cloud; set up a number of legion organizations in photovoltaic fields to open up new tracks...
Today, Huawei has built a strong ability to deal with uncertainties. So, for 2022 and the future of digital and low-carbon development, as a technology company, how can Huawei seize the opportunity? In what areas will we continue to innovate?
From Hu Houkun's introduction, we found the answer, that is, continuous innovation in four major areas + three major measures to deepen the digitalization of the industry + use digital technology to promote low carbon. There are many highlights of these strategies, let's interpret them in detail.
Continuous innovation: aiming at four major areas
The only constant in the world is change, and the only way to deal with change is through continuous innovation. If companies do not innovate, they will not be able to provide a continuous extreme, differentiated experience, and they may be slowly eliminated. Moreover, the road of a hundred miles is half more than ninety. Innovation is a marathon, can not be achieved overnight, if the enterprise has a slight setback, or is tempted, give up innovation, it may be abandoned.
Friends familiar with Huawei know that innovation is Huawei's DNA. In the 1990s, Huawei was just established, unable to obtain a stable supply of program-controlled switches, it was very bold to develop its own C&C08 digital program-controlled switches; Huawei's 2G and 3G wireless products could not open the situation in Europe, and it developed its own SingleRAN architecture to successfully attract European operators to choose; unable to stand firm in the high-end smartphone market, it developed its flagship SoC, took the lead in creating night shots/zoom and other capabilities, and finally shared the Chinese high-end market equally with Apple...
In the past decade, Huawei has invested more than 845 billion yuan in R&D expenses. In 2021, even in the face of operational difficulties, Huawei's investment in research and development will increase, from 10% of annual revenue ten years ago to 22% last year.
Huawei's continuous innovation and development model has great enlightenment for the development of Chinese technology companies - as long as you are a "long-distance runner" in the field of innovation, you will be able to resist the fierce competition in the market. We have seen that the state now attaches great importance to scientific and technological innovation, especially the innovation of basic technologies. Now, whether it is operators, ICT equipment manufacturers, Internet manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers, are increasing the scale of investment in scientific and technological innovation.
Of course, innovation is risky, and efforts that are not in the right direction are wasted. So, facing the future, in what direction will Huawei strive? From Hu Houkun's introduction, we learned that Huawei attaches great importance to innovation in four aspects.
First, connect innovation. Two years ago in the wireless field, Huawei first proposed and defined 5.5G, and now Huawei has completed a number of key technological innovations and verifications of 5.5G. In the fixed-line industry, at this HAS conference, Huawei also put forward the industry vision of F5.5G for the first time, hoping to increase bandwidth, coverage and experience by more than 10 times.
In the field of connectivity, Huawei has put forward a vision to achieve 10Gbps speed networks everywhere. You know, today's broadband is not yet 1Gpbs ubiquitous, for example, the actual average speed provided by 5G networks is several hundred Mbps. The proportion of home and enterprise Gigabit broadband access users also needs to be improved, let alone 10Gbps rate access.
Hu Houkun analyzed that in order to achieve such a leap forward, the industry needs to overcome many challenges. Huawei is working in this direction.
Second, computational innovation. Huawei plans to redefine the computing architecture and break through the computing bottleneck. In the face of the current explosive growth in computing power demand, the existing heterogeneous computing architecture is facing great challenges, and Huawei must solve this problem from three levels, namely computing nodes, data centers, and software architecture.
Third, cloud service innovation. For example, HUAWEI CLOUD built MetaStudio to implement digital content production lines on the cloud. According to reports, MetaStudio can fully mobilize the rendering resources of HUAWEI CLOUD million cores to move the whole process of film and television production to the cloud. The past 90-minute 3D movie, rendered in 6 months, based on MetaStudio, only took 2 weeks to complete.
Further, MetaStudio has moved the whole process of film and television production such as editing, modeling, and synthesis to the cloud, so that film and television creators can seamlessly collaborate in different places, greatly improve production efficiency, and shorten the content production cycle of a blockbuster movie from a few years to several months.
Last year, the author visited Changsha to visit enterprise digitalization, and saw that Changsha Malanshan Park used cloud technology to create a one-stop video industry cloud service platform, leading in China's computing architecture and cloud-native software architecture, and realizing the industrial aggregation of 4K, 8K, VR and AR for China's ultra-high-definition video.
Fourth, terminal innovation. In the past, innovations in the field of terminals focused more on hardware. Huawei is opening up a new battlefield, using the terminal as the entrance to create a human-centered all-scenario intelligent experience. For example, in the field of personal health management: Huawei released the watch WATCH D last year, which can monitor blood pressure, blood oxygen, electrocardiogram and other information; and work with partners to provide comprehensive digital health services based on this information.
Creating value: Three major measures enable the digitization of thousands of industries
If you continue to pay attention to the development of enterprises in different fields, you will find a common point: whether it is national policies, or the leaders of traditional industries such as transportation, energy, and medical care, they are promoting the same thing, that is, the introduction of cloud, AI and other technologies, giving full play to the advantages of cloud digital platforms, realizing the digitization of all aspects of office, production, operation and so on, reducing costs and increasing efficiency
Huawei has long noticed the trend of industry digitalization. Remember that at the HAS in 2011, Huawei set up an enterprise BG to focus on the digital needs of the government and enterprises. At the HASS in 2017, Huawei proposed the concept of full cloudification for the first time, to promote the full cloudification of ICT infrastructure. After the commercialization of 5G in 2019, Huawei has joined hands with operators to bring 5G into thousands of industries and promote 5G to change society.
In the wave of digitalization in the past decade, Huawei has positioned itself as an active enabler of customers' digital transformation, working with partners to make the cake bigger and share the cake.
However, we can see from the industry market exploration that the digitalization of the industry is not easy, and it faces many challenges: for example, the equipment communication protocol "seven countries and eight systems" used by traditional enterprises is difficult to "dialogue"; the enterprise scenarios are diverse, eager to understand both ICT technology and traditional business partners; some enterprises are hesitant to go to the cloud, and they are not satisfied with the effect of cloud migration and security.
In this regard, Hu Houkun shared Huawei's three major measures to deepen the digitalization of the industry.
The first step is to adapt the product to more scenarios. Keep the trouble to yourself, leave the convenience to customers and partners, and better meet the different needs of thousands of industries. According to reports, last year Huawei launched a scenario-based solution for more than 20 product portfolios to meet the needs of industry enterprises.
For example, in the underground scene of 5G coal mine, different from the 5G base station on the ground, the underground 5G base station must meet the requirements of underground safety production explosion protection, complete the explosion-proof transformation, and control the transmission power below 6W. Huawei adapts to the scene innovation of the coal mining industry, creates 5G base stations specifically for underground coal mine scenarios, and explores new application scenarios. At present, more than 200 coal mines have begun to apply 5G equipment, and more than 3,000 5G equipment have been installed underground, more and more.
The second step is to make it no longer difficult to go to the cloud. The cloud is a key technology for digitization. So Huawei's goal from the beginning is to build a good cloud. Specifically, Huawei has built a global network to allow customers' businesses to reach quickly and globally; now, HUAWEI CLOUD is deployed in 27 regions around the world, covering more than 170 countries, helping customers go global.
At the same time, Huawei is also helping customers use the cloud well, putting forward the concept of "everything is service" to help customers solve the problem of "unwilling to go up, will not go up, and use it badly".
Taking the Tianjin Port, which handles nearly 20 million containers a year, as an example, the port vigorously develops AI solvers, hoping to introduce AI technology to specify plans and improve port work efficiency and accuracy. However, if Tianjin Port develops an AI solver from scratch, it will take a lot of manpower to complete it. Now using cloud resources to train model generation algorithms, Tianjin Port needs very little practice to deploy AI solvers. This greatly reduces the difficulty of the APPLICATION OF THE AI solver in the port.
The third initiative is to start the operation of the legion and serve an industry with a team. Google used a corps of PhDs to greatly improve its ability to innovate. This inspired Huawei. So we see that in 2021, Huawei has successively established a coal mine army, a smart road army, a customs and port army, a smart photovoltaic team, and a data center energy team.
By the end of March 2022, Huawei has established 10 more legions, including the Power Digital Corps, the Government One Netcom Corps, the Airports and Orbits Corps, the Interactive Media Corps, the Sports Health Corps, the Display New Nuclear Corps, the Park Corps, the WIDE Area Network Corps, the Data Center Dock Corps, and the Digital Sites Corps, covering a number of emerging markets.
Many people do not understand Huawei's legion organization, and they feel very mysterious. At the HAS, Hu Houkun once again introduced the background of the establishment of Huawei's 15 legions.
It is reported that in the practice of helping customers digital transformation, Huawei found that customers have many problems. Huawei has a lot of technology, but with technology alone, it can't solve the customer's problem. Because on the one hand, the existing technologies cannot meet the needs of customers, on the other hand, these technologies are not yet combined to form a solution.
Therefore, Huawei hopes to set up such an integrated team as the Legion. The team not only has sales, but also demand management, industry solution development, ecological cooperation and other departments, each team for a specific industry, in-depth understanding of customer needs.
You may also ask, what role will huawei legion play in the future? According to Hu Houkun, Huawei's legion organization shortens the management chain vertically to make product development better respond to customer needs, quickly integrates resources horizontally, identifies key business scenarios, and integrates huawei and partner products and capabilities to form targeted solutions.
In fact, huawei's coal mining corps established in April last year has come to fruition. The legion, together with the national energy group, launched the mining system, connected different coal mining equipment, from demand research to commercial release in only 3 months, greatly shortening the chain from customer demand to product commercialization.
Unleashing social value: Promoting green development with digital technologies
As we all know, countries around the world attach great importance to "carbon neutrality" and "carbon peaking". The mainland put forward the "double carbon" target last year to guide various industries to achieve low-carbon transformation.
Nowadays, every industry will implement "double carbon" as an important development strategy, but what should be done? As a well-known enterprise in the field of digital technology, Huawei proposes to use digital technology to promote the green development of various industries.
Hu Houkun said that on the one hand, on the energy supply side, Huawei will promote the development of renewable energy such as photovoltaics.
Photovoltaic is becoming more and more important in renewable energy, Huawei's focus in the energy field is not to build solar panels, but to use digital technology to change the technical route of the photovoltaic industry: one is to take the lead in introducing the concept of wireless distributed base stations into the photovoltaic industry to increase power generation; the second is to introduce wireless private network and power carrier technology into the photovoltaic field to save deployment costs; the third is to use cloud and AI technology to the operation and maintenance of photovoltaic power plants and reduce operation and maintenance costs.
For example, in the Gobi Desert in Qinghai, Huawei helped customers build the world's largest 2.2GW single photovoltaic power plant, and increased power generation by more than 2% and operation and maintenance efficiency by more than 50% by using cloud and AI technology to photovoltaic power plants.
On the other hand, on the energy side, Huawei builds a green ICT infrastructure.
Specifically, in terms of sites, Huawei uses minimalist design, maximum use of renewable energy, and intelligent technologies to create a systematic green optimization solution. Based on this solution, Huawei helps operators deploy integrated outdoor cabinets in Indonesia, turning sites from indoors to outdoors, realizing the elimination of computer rooms and air conditioners, reducing the energy consumption of supporting infrastructure by about 30%; in Poland, Huawei superimposed photovoltaics on sites to achieve a solar power supply ratio of up to about 30%.
In terms of data centers, under the impetus of policies such as east and west counting, data centers have developed rapidly in the west and become a key infrastructure in the digital world. But the energy consumption of data centers should not be underestimated, how to create a green DC? Huawei addresses data center energy consumption challenges through innovative technologies such as full liquid cooling, AI management, prefabricated modules, and cluster computing.