I’ve been getting a lot of flack lately because of my support for the Chinese giant Huawei. Clearly there are many reasons floating around as to why Huawei should be ignored, boycotted, sued and a variety more equally severe actions. Why is this business being rebuked by so many people? It’s one thing for the US government to attack Huawei as part of its ongoing trade war with China. It’s another thing completely for individuals to be rejecting the world’s largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.
As a member of the media and a business analyst, I was invited to attend (virtually) the Huawei Global Analyst Summit, where I listened to two days of technical roundtables. Why? Because I wanted to know more about machine learning and AI as it relates to 5G. My friends and colleagues are not keen on the 5G network. I’ve had terrible comments attached to anything I’ve mentioned on social media that was positive about this company. I wanted to know more!
I think Huawei has been stigmatized by other events happening in the world, mainly trade and the COVID-19 crisis. Clearly a tech company with global roots can’t be pilloried solely because of its Chinese headquarters. As for possible security issues and IP concerns, other countries have their own intelligence agencies looking into your computer daily. I promise you that Huawei isn’t the only company that’s been accused of nefarious undertakings, and there’s no logical reason the company should be singled out. I use advanced security protocols like the rest of you should be using.
I live and work in a world of integrated collaborative systems where all countries are intertwined with each other. The trend of globalization can’t be reversed.
Every year, the Huawei Global Analyst Summit (HAS) is hosted to bring together hundreds of customers, partners, analysts and the media from around the world in a range of keynotes, summits and informational sessions, providing the latest updates and innovations of Huawei. It provides a platform for invited parties to discuss and explore key top-of-mind topics and trends in the industry.
The general theme of the event and sessions this year: to build a fully connected, intelligent world over the next decades. I didn’t see the political intrigue or any propaganda, but I did receive a massive amount of information that I can use over the next year or two for my own business.
The summit shed light on the importance of establishing a global collaborative Information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem. The rotating Chairman, Guo Ping, highlighted the need to build a cooperative ecosystem with unified standards. He called for global cooperation, in particular, surrounding the ICT industry chain, and stressed the need for all parties to cooperate with each other. His keynote did not sound like a foreign power trying to sell us a system fraught with secret codes.
Guo Ping expressed concern how the current innovative development in 5G, AI deployment and cloud security is hindered by the rising conflicts between different entities and their global perceptions.
Hank Stokbroekx, VP of Enterprise Services for Huawei, told us that Huawei is the leading ICT provider in the world with 70 countries using its customer centric services. The company has received an ‘outstanding’ certification by the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA), a US-based organization of 35,000 thought leaders in technology services.
Huawei’s professional services for industrial transformation have been instrumental in creating best practices for customer service for a leading railway. In this scenario they simplified operations and created onshore and offshore 24/7 support.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this division created an ICT ‘SWAT’ remote team with 24-hour access, 800 engineers and 100 experts to deal with customer issues from adjusting networks for use by remote employees to ensuring their customers’ business continuity.
Many have heard of the Wuhan hospital built in a week. Stokbroekx’s team created the entire ICT infrastructure and support for that project in just three days.
From my observations, Huawei has created a technical backup plan that is providing tech services as a people business. The company is trying to help provide businesses — many with outdated data systems and platforms — with hybrid systems to design, migrate and implement operations more effectively.
Xia Wenbo, Chief Digital Transformation Officer for Huawei’s Global Energy business unit, spoke on how cloud computing, 5G, Big Data and AI are accelerating the digital transformation in the power and energy industry. Energy structures, renewable energy and customer experience have driven digital transformation. China expects that clean energy will account for 50% of its energy production by 2030. For this to happen, the country needs new connectivity, new computing, new platforms and a new ecosystem.
At this three-day virtual Summit, the key word was collaboration. To achieve an external collaborative ecosystem, a company must choose the tools to support that ecosystem that are agreeable to everyone. The broader that ecosystem is spread among business and IT partners, the easier it will be to foster innovation across the world. If you think of it, collaboration should be relatively easy to attain considering that every nation has a common language in this venture – the language of IT!
Civilians and businesses may be fearful of the size, scope and location of Huawei, but the collaboration among professionals at this virtual summit has been inspiring. Huawei employs 180,000 people in more than 170 countries. More than 3 billion of the world’s population uses Huawei’s products and services.
Huawei allocates a considerable amount of resources toward customer service. They have an academy partner offering best practice training to other IT professionals globally and talent training partners to create exceptional employees for itself and for partner companies while training public students for world wide organizations. The company’s student ICT competition in 2019 gathered 100,000 students from 2000 universities from 61 countries to work on solutions to ICT.
In my many years in business I have seen corporate structures grow and decline. I’ve seen companies vilified because they made excellent business decisions and made vast amounts of money for their shareholders. IBM, Microsoft, Google and Facebook come to mind.
The time has come where polarized thinking, fear of the unknown and change make way for clear thinking and transparency so collaboration on a global scale can enable us all to be interconnected and better served.
Oscar Sempell, industrialist and head of United Steel Works Corp in the early 20th century said, “I am convinced that when confidence has been established amongst all nations of the world, the present capacity of industrial countries will not be sufficient to satisfy the demand.”
All we have to do is have open minds and share information with each other for the common good. It’s called collaboration!
Are you in?
Gary Bizzo is CEO of Syphon Nanotech Inc., Bizzo Management Group Inc., and Bizzo Integrated Marketing Corp. in Vancouver. London-based Richtopia placed Bizzo on the Top 100 Global Influencers in the World for 2018. He is an Adjunct Professor of Integrated Marketing & Communications as well as Consumer Behavior at the New York Institute of Technology, MBA School of Management (Vancouver Campus). Gary can be reached at [email protected].
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Equities Contributor: Gary Bizzo
Source: Equities News
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