/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
FEATURE: INTERNET OF THINGS
We have seen a lot of intrusion happening,
especially in this part of the world, to pipelines. operators, which is a very good success for us.
We continue to be the leader in this area.
If you lay a smart cable with Machine
Learning next to the pipeline and it has
cameras it will be able to detect any
intrusion and any leakage with an accuracy
of five metres. Now we’re working with them also to
expand on this business. Most of these
operators have already launched their
services commercially this year and the plan
is to continue to expand that.
There are a lot of applications that can
benefit different organisations, depending
on the industry, and there are a lot to come
because you have created the foundation
and the infrastructure. The growth of your company
over the past few years has
been remarkable. What have
been the major reasons for that?
I believe in the future we will have many more
applications and that will change our lives.
Are there any specific examples
you can give?
If you have a pump in the oilfield and the
average temperature of one of these pumps
should be 40 degrees, and all of a sudden it
goes to 50 degrees, this is a signal that this
pump is going to fail.
An AI solution will send you a report that this
pump is going to fail so you need to do the
right proactive maintenance for this pump
or order a new one or immediately replace it.
Otherwise it goes down.
So with AI, operation and maintenance costs
will go down and availability for businesses
will go up. You have a number of applications
for different industries. This is the foundation
of the Digital Transformation and the Fourth
Industrial Revolution and this cannot happen
without 5G and AI.
What will the impact of
5G and IoT be beyond
telecommunications?
We’ve been talking about autonomous
cars for years but we couldn’t implement
it, because of the relatively high latency of
the 4G or 3G. Now when we bring 5G into
play because of the very low latency we can
implement a technology like autonomous cars.
With autonomous cars cameras need to
detect the different objects and avoid them
and decide what actions to take. So you have
Edge Computing in the car itself. In the past,
we weren’t able to do this because we didn’t
have the intelligence in the car.
www.intelligentcio.com
Alaa Elshimy, Managing Director, Enterprise
Business Group, Middle East
You previously needed to capture the video,
send it to the command and control centre
or your data centre, process it and then send
the information back to the car so it could
make its decisions.
Today you don’t need to do that. You have
enough intelligence in the car because
of Edge Computing and the AI chipset
integrated into it.
And then the car can take the decision on the
spot in the car itself, thanks to the technology.
So AI and 5G are two key enablers for the
transformation of this industry.
What can you tell us about
Huawei’s performance in the
last year?
If we look at our performance in the first half
of the year, we achieved $59 billion globally.
This is a 23% year over year growth.
Can you tell us about the
company’s 5G operations in
the Middle East in the last
12 months?
In Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar and across
the region we have signed with all the main
One major differentiator is our investment in
R&D. Last year we invested US$15.3 billion.
This year we are planning to invest US$18
billion. These are huge numbers. This is
maybe bigger than the total profit of some
of the competition.
And the objective, of course, is to bring new
technology to help transform the industry
to the benefit of the enterprises and the
consumer business.
In terms of your individual
customers do their
requirements change a lot?
We are living in a world that’s transforming
very fast and one of the key drivers is
technology. For instance, the UAE appointed
the first Minister of AI and then you start to
see other AI ministers appointed in other
Middle Eastern countries and across the globe.
So things are changing in the world
because of the involvement of technology
and because we are becoming more
demanding as individuals.That’s creating
more challenges but also creating new
opportunities and more opportunities.
We believe at Huawei that we have
introduced two key technologies, that’s
5G and AI, that’s contributing a lot to this
transformation journey. n
I BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE WE WILL
HAVE MANY MORE APPLICATIONS AND
THAT WILL CHANGE OUR LIVES.
INTELLIGENTCIO
53