The 2024 Pan-African DataCentres Exhibition and Conference at the Sandton Convention Centre last week gathered nearly 3 000 global data centre energy customers as well as 120 integrators, consulting firms and industry associations sharing advanced technologies, industry insights and innovation cases. As a key participant in the 2024 Pan-African DataCentres Exhibition and Conference, Huawei experts offered their latest insights and solutions for data centre construction.

Huawei covered data centre investment, planning, construction, servicing and solutions – and engaged with experts from well-known consulting companies and industry associations on building a data centre industry exchange platform in Africa. Huawei shared its 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 data centres, 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 energy use to minimise environmental impacts.

On the theme of green digital infrastructure and enabling intelligence in Africa, Hong Cui, director of Huawei’s 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,” Cui 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 it ubiquitous. In this scenario, cloud platforms become the strategic core of an enterprise’s digital business. Cui said Huawei Cloud provides multiple cloud migration solutions including public, hybrid and edge cloud to meet 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.”

In his keynote address, Roc Bai, vice president of Huawei Cloud Southern Africa, spoke highly of African enterprises’ progress in building innovative fintech solutions but noted the challenges they face in accessing digital solutions including internet service disruptions and difficulties with cloud access.

Bai’s solutions included cloud infrastructure that will cover the entire continent as well as hybrid systems that provide reliable data localisation and a cloud industry that addresses unique industry needs.

During his presentation, Bai highlighted 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 the needs of businesses in Africa.

He also shared Huawei’s AI capabilities in its Pangu 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. “As African industries embrace AI, we can ensure that smart and green cloud services are available to power the digital economy,” added Bai.

For more information, please visit Huawei at www.huawei.com.