Egypt cloud industry needs better infrastructure and more data centres
Jo Xu made these remarks in an interview with Ahram Online on the sidelines of the award ceremony Huawei Technologies held on Thursday in Cairo to honour the Huawei Developers Competition 2024 winners.
Hundreds of Egyptian developers participated in this competition and presented innovative cloud computing and artificial intelligence ideas.
"Companies like Huawei are here to invest, and we're going to keep investing, but Egypt's government should somehow enhance and improve the network to allow anyone to access the cloud and enjoy every kind of service the cloud provides," Jo Xu explained to Ahram Online.
According to the Amazon Web Services website, cloud computing is "the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, [customers] can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider."
In May, Huawei Cloud launched its Cairo branch, making Huawei the first company to launch a public cloud service suite in Egypt. Huwaei's cloud suite in Egypt is also the first in North Africa.
Jo Xu said that within seven months, Huawei Cloud had attracted several companies looking to support their digital sovereignty.
"We are expanding based on customer requirements. Our customers now are mainly fintech companies," he told Ahram Online.
Jo Xu emphasized that the cloud has become the most reliable service provider for safe data storage and the future of all IT services.
"I believe in the future. The IT service for any company would be only about network and cloud. Network is connecting the customers or the enterprises to the cloud. There are different kinds of services the cloud provides, including infrastructure and platform services and applications. Therefore, I believe Huawei Cloud is supporting the Egyptian economy and speeding up digital transformation in Egypt," Jo Xu highlighted.
Responding to a question about establishing data centres in Egypt, Jo Xu told Ahram Online that Egypt needs to prepare data centre rooms and racks that Huawei or any other cloud computing service provider can run and moderate.
Data centres are the backbone of cloud computing, providing the physical resources necessary to deliver cloud services effectively and efficiently. Cloud services rely on data centres to provide the physical infrastructure for hosting and managing cloud services. Major cloud providers own massive data centres around the world.
Jo Xu also noted that it is more economical and less costly for the government to invest in large-scale data centres that serve many customers at once rather than establishing small data centres serving a limited number of customers.