Powering a new era of digital transformation with Huawei at GITEX Global 2024
At GITEX Global 2024, one of the world’s largest technology summits held annually in Dubai, UAE, Huawei took the opportunity to showcase the brightest and boldest innovations to emerge from its long-standing exploration of financial technology.
Huawei showcased its fintech innovations at GITEX Global 2024
Among the 1,600 exhibitors at Dubai’s World Trade Centre in October, Huawei bolstered its unmistakable presence with a central exhibition space across over 1,400 square metres.
Here, the Chinese technology giant presented a wide variety of financial solutions specifically designed to accelerate the industry’s efforts towards achieving a new era of digital transformation.
A resilient first step
Representatives from over 180 countries worldwide were enriched through the continuous flow of insights delivered via the roster of roundtables, forums, fireside chats and panels hosted by Huawei as the summit’s diamond sponsor.
One such gathering, the Huawei Finance Forum, aired key considerations regarding the industry’s critical delivery of resilient and competitive financial services.
With the theme of ‘Boost Resilience, Reshaping Smarter Finance Together’, the forum welcomed a variety of distinguished speakers from Huawei Digital Finance BU.
Among the most notable speakers was Alvin Feng, director of global marketing and solution sales for Huawei Digital Finance BU, who shared compelling insights regarding the division’s FSI solution framework.
During his presentation, Feng described how the framework not only enhances clients’ resilience, agility and intelligence capabilities, but also delivers “unique capabilities” derived from Huawei’s longstanding reputation as a preeminent provider of telecommunications infrastructure.
Feng cites democratised access to “best practices worldwide, a global ecosystem and an extensive digital talent system in China” as the direct benefits of this integration, marking the advent of such advanced capabilities as “crucial for customers’ successful transformation”.
Alvin Feng speaking at the Huawei Finance Forum
He detailed how Huawei proposes to reinforce its financial clients with resilient financial infrastructure through its self-devised concept of Four Zeroes.
These encompass Zero Wait for real-time processing, Zero Trust for a multi-layer, in-depth protection solution, Zero Downtime for service continuity, and Zero Touch, which aims to eliminate the requirement for human intervention in network operations.
Feng emphasised how Huawei enables clients to achieve these goals simultaneously through a multi-layered application of cloud, network, storage and computing infrastructure.
This approach is outlined in its purest form through Huawei’s Digital Finance Solution Framework.
Autonomous infrastructure including multi-active data centres, hybrid cloud environments, SD-LAN/WAN integrations and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) form the foundation of this framework, which is then strengthened with Huawei’s Intelligent Business Engine and corresponding digital core, real-time risk management, precision marketing, AI and developer and automated operations modules.
Joining these are tools for digital engagement, such as video banking, intelligent branches, AI-enabled contact centres and chatbot services, and a host of ubiquitous financial services covering AI microfinance, AI financial inclusion, AI industrial finance, smart contracts and digital payments.
Delivering bank-wide data connectivity, agile product development, enriched data-driven decision making, accelerated application modernisation and enriched scenario innovation as part of an action plan for a resilient infrastructure with Four Zeros, this all-in-one framework has attracted over 3,700 financial institutions to date, including 53 of the world’s top 100 banks, with Huawei Digital Finance BU extending its reach to over 80 countries worldwide.
Among the latest adopters of Huawei’s financial technology is Alinma Bank, a Saudi Arabian epicentre for dynamic, innovative, Shariah-compliant banking and financial services.
Having previously adopted Huawei’s resilient financial infrastructure, the bank renewed a deal with the company at GITEX Global 2024 to now include cloud solutions.
Jason Cao, CEO of Digital Finance BU, says the partnership seeks “to support Alinma Bank’s digital transformation success with our technology, solutions and global experiences”.
Alinma Bank renews Huawei partnership at GITEX Global 2024 (Image: Huawei)
Counting on the cloud
Huawei has pioneered the industry’s continued utilisation of the cloud throughout all corners of its commitment to advancing technological innovation.
At GITEX Global 2024, innovations in cloud technology were highlighted by the Huawei Cloud Summit, which proved an evident highlight of the agenda for delegates wishing to discover more about its benefits.
Taking to the stage to deliver his opening speech, Michael Chen, director of business development at Huawei Cloud Middle East and Central Asia, commented: “As fintech companies strive to innovate and deliver the most secure, scalable and efficient services to customers, Huawei Cloud helps them to achieve these goals by providing cutting-edge cloud infrastructure and advanced technology, like AI, big data and the blockchain.”
Succeeding Chen on the stage, Wang Yang, chief product officer of Huawei Cloud Fintech, confirmed how Huawei’s Dedicated Financial Cloud is “affecting the revolution of the financial industry deeply”.
Yang detailed how the 5A Resilient Platform’s application of AI and cloud-native data analysis across various fields in finance is actively ushering in a new era of more agile transactional and decision-making capabilities.
He explains how Huawei’s deployment of the cloud within the financial industry is designated across two primary steps. The first is the deployment of its resilient infrastructure, which Yang states eliminates business concerns across security, compliance, scalability and reliability.
Following this, Huawei assists clients in modernising their applications, shifting them to a modern microservices architecture to benefit application scalability, portability and elasticity.
This process, Yang explains, is supported by four modes of business deployment capable of aligning with differing business requirements.
“If you care about the total cost and flexibility, you can deploy your business with dedicated resources. If you want to reduce your cost of maintenance, you can host your resources in Huawei Cloud,” Yang comments.
“If you want to ensure your data security and privacy, you can choose the dedicated region to deploy your business, or even, you can deploy directly on-premises with CloudPond, the product name of Huawei Cloud.”
Once in motion, financial institutions can build upon the technology with a variety of partner-supported solutions, including risk control and anti-fraud solutions, and a mobile money mini-programme solution.
Yang says the mini-programme solution enables financial institutions to “deploy, develop, manage and host a super-app within a single environment”, while shortening rollout and migration times to under 10 days.
Fintech and the future
While offering delegates a plethora of insights and findings through its unmissable presence at GITEX Global 2024, one key takeaway from Huawei’s presentations at the conference this year was the rapid pace of fintech’s growth.
The company evidently continues to lean into its strengths around connectivity, security, cloud computing and other advanced technologies to fine-tune solutions specifically designed to elevate the financial industry’s continued pursuit of digital transformation to new heights.
Ultimately, Huawei’s participation at GITEX Global 2024 will inevitably inspire onlookers to rethink their own strategies in the face of rapid technological change, serving as a roadmap for connecting the untapped potential of technology for the betterment of financial innovation.
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