Huawei CLOUD: The Six Public Sector Trends For 2022

Jay Zhou, Huawei CLOUD South Africa Managing Director

Jay Zhou, Huawei CLOUD South Africa Managing Director

The public sector continues to face a combination of technological challenges which tests its resilience and ability to digitally transform.

In the face of a world that has been completely impacted by the pandemic, it has become imperative then to have new technological solutions which will positively impact the citizens, workforces and economies. This largely places innovation, agility, data and analytics including new methods of working at the doorstep of cloud technology.

According to Gartner, a research firm, today, the cloud underpins most new technological disruptions, including business, and has proven itself during times of uncertainty with its resiliency, scalability, flexibility and speed. The company states that hybrid, multi-cloud and edge environments are growing and setting the stage for new distributed cloud models.

In the past two years, cloud computing services have exploded as companies have gone virtual and many have embraced hybrid work environments. This adaption to the global pandemic has seen a strong focus on the delivery of various digital transformation strategies. In 2022, it's expected that an upward trend of this growth and uptake will continue.

Jay Zhou, Huawei CLOUD South Africa Managing Director and Frank Shi, Business Development Manager, are of the view that the industry should brace itself for a shift from the deployment of cloud tools and platforms (team meetings) to allencompassing strategies focused on enterprise-wide cloud migration.

In this vein, the duo have shared a forecast of the top trends in public sector cloud for the year ahead. They strongly believe that among other pertinent factors, increasing the abilities and skills of entirely remote and hybrid work environments will stay in 2022, however there will be consistent innovation in cloud and data centre infrastructure. With this context in mind, it is essential to unpack several key points of how this will occur in 2022.

Hybrid cloud blurs the distinction between public and private clouds

When businesses begun their cloud migration journey, they had two options. First was accessing pay-asyou-go public cloud solutions or going with tailored and flexible private cloud solutions. In more modern times, we see cloud conglomerates expanding their rollout of hybrid models that use a best of both worlds approach. Data that is required on hand can be kept on a certain provider while sensitive data can be stored on private services where it is closely monitored and accessed through proprietary applications. According to Jay Zhou, Huawei CLOUD South Africa Managing Director, this may become more popular as companies use a multi-cloud strategy. “With Huawei as the chosen platform for government cloud, public sector departments are expecting more and more from us, specifically to service the citizen service needs in the cloud.” “With Huawei as the chosen platform for government cloud, public sector departments are expecting more and more from us, specifically to service the citizen service needs in the cloud. The Huawei Public Cloud platform is an extension of the Sita Cloud platform and is able to meet the demand for commodity citizen services in a pay as you go model giving departments the ability and flexibility to move between two cloud platforms.”

The rise of cloud native

A unique and key hallmark of the public cloud strategy, this means that enterprises no longer have to be tied down to long-term contracts where they rent servers for storage. According to Zhou, with serverless, pay-as-yougo means you can scale invisibly as an application or as the business requires it. “With the cloud service provider taking over the management, configurations and technicalities of the server, companies can rest assured that they're placing their data in the hands of a capable and innovative partner like Huawei,” said Zhou.

Cloud evolves with exciting new use cases

A leading university in the Western Cape required an existing application to be loaded onto the cloud for long term native retention. Zhou says Huawei was the only cloud provider which could accomplish this. “This was a strong case of how our services are uniquely created to solve problems. The university had a large load of data that was continuously being processed. Creating a reliable link which could work effectively with the app and cloud was exciting for us. In 2022, there’ll be more cases like this, as the public sector adopts cloud in the main to work efficiently and in an agile manner,” said Zhou.

CLOUD as their new home for business continuity also in a bid to counter the threat against the increase of cyber and ransomware threats. This results in better service delivery and availability of services: That means no more: “Sorry, we are offline Sir.”

CLOUD as their new home for business continuity also in a bid to counter the threat against the increase of cyber and ransomware threats. This results in better service delivery and availability of services: That means no more: “Sorry, we are offline Sir.”

A greener cloud leads to sustainability

At the Huawei Connect conference in Shenzhen, China, which also serves as the tech giant’s headquarters, guests were treated to the welcome news that data centres are going green. What does this mean? Huawei CLOUD Business Development Manager Frank Shi explains that it’s not only a matter of resource saving, it’s understanding the precious carbon footprint that companies need to be cognisant of. “Going into 2022, as Huawei we’re putting our communities first and ensuring that our data centres are fully integrated in being green friendly. We want to have a legacy of trust and that begins with protecting our environment. Forecasts show that climate change will cost companies up to $1,6 trillion per year by 2025.”

Shi further outlines a four step process beginning with effective construction goals such as natural cooling systems, second is suitable cooling schemes encompassing implementing confined cold aisles, row-level air conditioners and heat pipes, which combine to use between 20-to-40% less energy than traditional schemes. In the third step, improving electrical efficiency via clean energy is priority. Lastly, effective routine maintenance will help ensure that equipment continues to operate at its best.

Collaboration gets a smarter look

With the Covid 19 pandemic drastically changing the face of how schools and offices function, this has placed pressure on the working world and education sector to stay ahead through new way of working. This has led to the adoption of learner management systems and office hubs, such as Huawei’s IdeaHub, a native hybrid LMS service. According to Shi, the IdeaHub platform enables workers and learners to communicate effectively as they work remotely, mirroring a state-of-the-art model in which anti-cheating during exam taking and efficient collaboration for employees can take place. Another partnership with a leading local black Moodle service provider that helps customers get their model solution cloud ready, migrates the solution to the Huawei CLOUD, and now integrates Moodle on Huawei CLOUD into leading capabilities. This is supplemented by their team of local content creators to meet the varying learning modalities today which has proven to be effective in today’s changed world.

Cloud sovereignty at the forefront

Zhou and Shi stress that security has become an undeniable concern which companies have to address in fast manner. They cite Snapt and Kemp, two companies they partnered with to provide cyber security services to VICIT which in turn enables a stable security system for the highest office in the land. “At Huawei we believe in this and have partnered with various industry leaders to hep respond to this changing threat. With our partners, we provide proof of value services that help you chart your way forward to deal with these threats,” concluded Zhou.

There's no doubt that the public sector is focused on sovereignty. This has led to working with cloud vendors to ring fence control, costs, transparency and compliance to build trust between citizens and the government. With trust at the centre, Zhou is of the viewpoint that Huawei CLOUD can play a pivotal role in building partnerships that will deliver public policy objectives.

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