The 2024 Pan-African Data Centres Exhibition and Conference opened at the Sandton Convention Centre today. At this gathering nearly 3,000 global data centre energy customers, as well as 120 integrators, consulting firms, and industry associations shared advanced technologies, industry insights, and highlighted innovation cases.
As a key participant in the exhibition and conference, Huawei experts offered their latest insights and solutions for data centre (DC) construction as Africa enters the intelligent era. Huawei’s input in the conference agenda covered topics like data centre investment, planning, construction, servicing, and solutions.
Huawei engaged with experts from well-known consulting companies and industry associations on the topic of how to build a DC industry exchange platform in Africa. Huawei shared its latest views on the layout of data centres in Africa, to help carriers take the lead in the artificial intelligence (AI) era, and fully exploit the advantages of DCs, IT, Huawei Cloud, digital energy, and Huawei’s green full-stack data centre solutions.
As the course of human innovation accelerates towards a smart world, data centres are becoming key infrastructure which will usher in a host of opportunities and challenges. Data centres allow for storage and networking capabilities that power innovative technologies like AI, but as innovations increase so does the energy consumption of data centres. Building the data centre of the future will require more efficient cooling systems and more efficient energy use to minimise environmental impacts.
On the theme of green digital infrastructure and enabling intelligence in Africa, Huawei’s Cui Hong, Director of Data Centre Integration, Solution Sales Department said, “Huawei understands the challenges of data centre construction in Africa and addresses them through its four core values: fast construction, flexible cooling, green energy supply, and ultimate security.”
Huawei infrastructure is equipped with FusionBlock, disaster recovery management, operation assistance, and data migration. “The all-scenario data centre service solution helps customers and partners build a solid foundation for the intelligent era and efficiently uses each watt of energy to support greener computing power,” Hong added.
As large AI models develop rapidly, massive computing power requirements emerge, and a large amount of data will be generated and transmitted. Because of this, data has become one of the most valuable assets within an enterprise.
To help customers build an intelligent, secure, and green data centre, Huawei released the innovative data centre infrastructure architecture F2F2X (from flash memory to flash memory to anything), from primary storage to backup, and archiving. This offering has been diversified to help customers build reliable storage facilities, where data can be stored, run quickly, and used well.
AI is reshaping thousands of industries, and cloud technology will be key to making AI ubiquitous. In this scenario cloud platforms become the strategic core of an enterprises’ digital business. Hong shared that Huawei Cloud provides multiple cloud migration solutions, including public cloud, hybrid cloud, and edge cloud to meet its customer needs. “In addition, we provide local cloud services in South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria, enabling customers in these regions to easily access the cloud with the best performance, and security compliance,” he said.
In his keynote address, +AI, Enable the Future of a Digital Africa; Roc Bai, Vice President of Huawei Cloud Southern Africa spoke highly of the progress African enterprises have made with building innovative fintech solutions, but noted the challenges they face when it comes to increasing access to digital solutions. These include internet service disruptions and difficulties with cloud access.
Bai tabled solutions like, “providing cloud infrastructure that will cover the whole continent, creating hybrid solutions that provide reliable data localisation and creating a cloud industry that addresses unique industry needs.”
During his presentation Bai showcased the capabilities of Huawei’s latest cloud stack offering as well as GaussDB, Huawei’s enterprise-grade distributed database that offers scalable high performance that can meet needs of businesses in Africa.
He also shared Huawei AI capabilities displayed with its Pangu AI models which can provide industry specific solutions across mining, smart city management and accurate weather forecasting.
“In the AI era, Huawei will continue to work with our customers and ecosystem partners to explore sustainable development. This will help customers grow their technological capacity, and innovate to find solutions to pressing challenges,” Bai said.
Huawei envisions playing a critical role in building the foundations of secure and reliable computing power within the intelligent computing era. Bai concludes that as African industries embrace AI, we can ensure that smart green technologies are available to power the digital economy.
