RIYADH: Chinese technology giant Huawei plans to build a cloud region in Saudi Arabia, allowing businesses and governments in the Middle East to have more access to the company’s cloud services.
Rotating Chairman, Guo Ping, made the announcement at LEAP in Riyadh, noting the Kingdom’s aggressive plans to become one of the world’s top technology-driven economies in the world.
“Over the past three years alone, many global enterprises have fully embraced digitalization, with the top 10 percent of these organizations growing their revenue as much as five times faster than those who have not embraced digitalization,” he explained.
Ping reiterated Huawei’s role in the ongoing digitalization trend in Saudi Arabia, citing examples where it helped crucial industries to adopt new ways of engaging customers.
“For the past 17 years, the company has assured stable Saudi telecom networks during major national events such as the Hajj that demands high quality networks,” the Huawei executive said in a statement, also adding it worked with Aramco on intelligent oil field operations.
The Kingdom, under its Vision 2030, has identified technology as a key success factor for its goals to diversify its economy, including exploring ways to apply artificial intelligence in key industries.
Huawei has pledged to support this endeavor, Ping said, particularly working wit Saudi Arabia to develop a large-scale AI model to be used in language identification, medical research and development, and disease detection among others.
The LEAP conference in Riyadh is taking place until Feb. 3.
