Huawei: Caribbean can adapt to post-covid19 world

Huawei experts believe covid19 has highlighted the urgent need for economies and businesses in the Caribbean to accelerate their current pace of digital transformation. They believe the region must grapple with the rapid development of cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT); the proliferation of new connections and applications; and the massive amounts of data being generated which creates immense pressure for real-time data processing.

Huawei experts from its headquarters and from the region offered their perspective and solutions on issues relating to the Cloud, data storage and data processing at the first-ever Huawei IT Day targeting the English-speaking Caribbean, on June 23.

This first-time event —in the form of a webinar—attracted 121 participants, with the majority from TT and Suriname, and other participants coming from the rest of the Caribbean, Mexico, England and India.

Speakers included Jeff Jin, country manager, Huawei TT; Juan Martínez, enterprise IT product manager, Huawei Central America and the Caribbean; and Darío Favela, sales engineer Huawei Cloud, Huawei Latin America.

Noting that digital transformation has become even more imperative for the Caribbean as covid19 has changed the way people live and do business, Jin believes smaller countries could actually have an advantage as it may be faster to bring new technologies and implement new ways of government providing services, or to develop and improve industries.

He added: “I can see a lot of opportunity for this region to become a leader in technology, provide infrastructure for delivery of services to their people, and boost their economies.”

The interactive session encouraged participants to ask questions via the chat room with 40 people commenting. One participant asked how Huawei was able to manage its operations during the pandemic. The Huawei spokesperson said the company had established an epidemic prevention and control emergency response team at three levels, which included staff health management, product supply management and delivery service management.

Speaking on the evolution of computing, Martínez said chip sets could now be found on everyday items and appliances such as clothing, streetlights, smoke alarms and fridges.

“We need to stop and realise that this is creating a huge demand for computing power because there is a very critical need to process the massive amounts of data being generated and make use of it to make better business decisions,” he said.