In an attempt to build itself as a credible supplier of IT solutions across multiple industries, China-based tech company Huawei is shifting its focus from local telcos to other business sectors in the Philippines.
Among the industries that Huawei is eyeing are public utilities, power, transportation, finance, media, and even small and medium businesses (SMB).
Huawei executives shared the company’s plans during the “Huawei ICT Carnival 2013” conducted on Tuesday, Nov. 5, at the Blue Leaf Pavilion in Bonifacio Global City, attended by hundreds of local partners and customers.
William Dong, director for solutions sales and marketing at Huawei’s Southern Pacific enterprise business group, said the company plans to invest more in the Philippines and work with local industries to better understand and develop customized solutions to address their individual challenges.
Dong said Huawei is offering its customer-centric solutions and services to solve business performance issues of its target industries.
At the ICT fair, Huawei showcased its intelligent video surveillance solution, eLTE wireless network solution, unified communications and collaboration solution, servers, storage solutions and its all-in-one-micro datacenter solution.
As proof of Huawei’s efforts to facilitate business transformation in the Philippines, the company introduced its new S12700 series agile switches and the 802.11ac access points (APs).
The two products are part of Huawei’s enterprise networking product line, which provide a portfolio of enterprise network products including routers, switches, WLAN, network security, optical transmission, microwave, and network management products.
Ajay Agupta, director of marketing at Huawei’s enterprise group, said the agile programmable network is the fifth generation switching designed to enhance business services and the experience of users, supporting higher reliability and larger Ethernet frames.
“Networking has changed, it is no longer your grandfather’s network,” Agupta said. “Huawei’s agile switch is future-proof, you don’t replace it every two years.”
Agupta said Huawei invests annually an average of 10 percent of its revenues on research and development (R&D), and that 45 percent or 70,000 of its 150,000 employees are currently engaged in R&D.
Dong said Huawei’s revenues hit $35.4 billion in 2012, serving 45 of the world’s top 50 operators and one-third of the world’s population.
In the Philippines, Huawei has more than 1,300 employees, where more than 85 percent are recruited locally. It has nine offices — four in Manila, two in Cebu and one each in Tarlac, Pasig City, and Davao. Huawei also has an innovation center and training center in the country.