Establishing the right partner relationships is crucial for Huawei’s bid to expand its cloud business outside of China, said Huawei executives at ITU Telecom World 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Huawei is aiming to have 60% to 70% of its cloud business originate from outside of China by the end of next year, up from the current 25%. The firm has installed cloud bases in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe.
Huawei’s director of cloud computing marketing, Ron Raffensperger, said Huawei’s current challenge lies in engaging both systems integrators and software application partners specializing in cloud deployments for specific verticals, to help with its international cloud expansion.
Raffensperger cited healthcare and transportation as e-government applications that hold great growth potential, and finding the right set of partners to pursue such projects with is critical, he said. Huawei has to date established between 20 -30 partner relationships with such firms.
The firm has also adopted the Amazon Web Services cloud interface as a standard for its own cloud products, so customers get access to tools and applications that have been developed around the Amazon cloud.
Raffensperger cited the adaptability of Huawei’s internal sales organizations as a further challenge faced by the company. A sales force accustomed to selling products such as switches and antennas could not sell the cloud concept to customers in the same way, and the challenge lay in understanding the needs of customers outside of China, he said.