Huawei counting on resellers in public cloud battleground

Vendor forms alliances to offer public cloud services outside domestic Chinese market

Huawei has unveiled its ambitions to build "one of the world's five clouds", signaling its intent to compete with the likes of public cloud giants Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google and IBM.

"Cloud is a cornerstone of the intelligent world," Huawei rotating CEO Guo Ping told attendees at the vendor's annual customer event, Huawei Connect 2017, in Shanghai, China.

Pointing to Huawei's "long-term, strategic investment in public cloud", Ping said the vendor was partnering with carriers Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica internationally to provide public cloud services.

Ping said Huawei will work with partners "99 percent of the time" to bring its products to the non-Chinese market.

He compared the new "cloud alliance" to airlines' partner alliances, "which take passengers wherever they need to go in the world".

"These telcos have established trust and relationships with governments and large enterprises. That's the model we will build on," Ping told attendees. "Huawei has never taken shortcuts and we never will... It's the same for Huawei Cloud. We will work with partners to build a cloud alliance."

The CEO wouldn't name Huawei's potential cloud rivals explicitly - "it's not the first question we consider", he said - but the current top cloud infrastructure providers in order of market share, according to analyst Canalys' Q1 2017 numbers, are AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google and IBM. Other analysts put Alibaba and Salesforce as contenders for fifth place.

Ping believes Huawei differs from its rivals in that it doesn't look to monetise its customers' data.

"In 2015 we launched our cloud strategy and we said our public cloud wouldn't touch the customer's applications or data. We commit to that again, that without the consent of the customer, Huawei Cloud won't monetize their data," he said, adding it was a factor in partners' willingness to collaborate with Huawei. "We won't turn their data into our own and profit from it."

Zheng Yelai, president of Huawei Cloud BU and IT product line, admitted Huawei wasn't yet "the best player, but we are the fastest moving player making progress".

"Huawei is not a great talker about ideas, but we are a great doer in making them happen," he said.

Huawei currently has no official timeframe for rolling out the cloud services.