Huawei Announces Opening of its OpenLab in India to Accelerate Enterprise Digitisation

Huawei has announced the launch of its OpenLab in India to provide a one-stop ICT infrastructure support for smart city and enterprises digitisation transformation. A testimony to Huawei’s commitment to Government of India’s Digital India agenda, the OpenLab Delhi aims to establish an industry ecosystem and serve as a co-innovation platform for Huawei, its customers and partners, both in India and global, for incubating industry solutions to address the challenges of digital transformation.

Commenting on the development Jay Chen, CEO, Huawei India said, “The OpenLab Delhi marks a new step in our commitment and collaboration with India which began more than 18 years ago. It is going to pave the way for a more rapid development of a new “Smart Nation” offering various type services to its citizens. Over the next 3 years, Huawei will be investing 23 million USD jointly in its OpenLabs in India and Thailand. These facilities will provide platforms for customers and partners to innovate together using Huawei's ICT capabilities and India’s local talent.”

Built as a part of Huawei’s Global OpenLab Program, the OpenLab Delhi is the 12th facility globally. Located at Huawei India’s Gurugram headquarters, the facility will serve as an open, flexible, and secure platform for joint innovation with customers and partners. The OpenLab Delhi will focus on driving Smart City innovations in areas as diverse as IoT, Smart Pole, Smart Building, Smart Campus (perimeter alarm, smart parking, energy efficiency management and visitor management), Smart Transportation, Intelligent Video Surveillance solutions and Convergent Command & Control solutions.

Derek Hao, President, Enterprise Business Group, Huawei India stated, “India is a key market for the Enterprise business and the OpenLab Delhi is an important part of Huawei’s global OpenLab plan. With this OpenLab, Huawei looks to serve India as well as global partners and customers leveraging its global expertise, talents, technologies, and customer business successes. Aiming to develop the industry ICT ecosystem development locally, Huawei’s OpenLab aims to empower enterprises to quickly respond to new market opportunities and develop competitive, commercialized solutions by testing them in a real live environment. We will also be providing training and certification to Indian ICT talent in latest technologies at the OpenLab Delhi.”

Aiming to enhance the ICT ecosystem in India, the OpenLab Delhi will offer ICT training to nearly 400 personnel per year; provide ICT Career Certification to 250 engineers per year; and Proof of Concept Training to nearly 100 engineers annually.

Huawei will partner with System Integrators (SI), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Independent Hardware Vendors (IHVs), and Consultants for its OpenLab in India. Huawei, together with industry alliance and partners like Trinity, Videonetics, Qogno in India and Honeywell, SAP, Johnson Controls, OBS at a global level aims to build ICT ecosystem in the country in response to industry’s digital transformation. Currently, a total of 211 of Fortune Globe 500, including 48 of the top 100, have chosen Huawei as their partner in digital transformation.

Compared to traditional technology-centric labs, Huawei OpenLab Delhi will be market-oriented, and aim to develop hardware and software services as well as solutions based on customers’ requirements during their digital transformation. Designed and conceptualized to enable access to visitors to witness and experience the solution demonstration area, the OpenLab Delhi will be connected to Huawei’s global OpenLab network allowing universal exchange of ideas about new business models, market needs, and technical solutions. It will operate through four functional centers: Partner development center, solution joint innovation center, talent training and certification center, and industry experience center.

Up until the Q3 of this year, Huawei had already opened 12 OpenLabs focused on enterprise customers: they are in Delhi (Gurgaon), Bangkok, Singapore, Munich, Paris, Dubai, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cairo, Johannesburg, Moscow and Suzhou (China) which are facilitating joint innovation and solution launches with more than 700 partners across Smart City, finance, transportation, energy, manufacturing and media sectors. In the future, Huawei will continue to invest in its OpenLab program to have more than 20 facilities globally. Over the next three years, Huawei will allocate nearly 1,000 talents around the world and invest a total of USD200 million in the program.

Platform + Ecosystem Strategy Accelerates Digital Transformation with Customers and Partners

The Global OpenLab program is aligned with Huawei Enterprise Business Group’s ‘Platform + Ecosystem’ strategy. This strategy focuses on collaborating with partners and customers to develop innovative, differentiated and leading industry-specific solutions that enable open, elastic, flexible, and secure platforms to drive enterprise digital transformation. Huawei is focused on facilitating a digital transformation ecosystem to implement joint innovations and expand the ecosystem in terms of industry alliances, business alliances, developer platforms and open source communities. Huawei is working with outstanding local companies to integrate their capabilities into the global value chain and promote their capabilities across the world, helping to enhance the competitiveness of local ICT industries.

Huawei has also rolled out its Developer Enablement Plan for the SEA region under which it will aim to support digital economy and ecosystem building in the region. Over the next three years, Huawei will invest US$81 million in building OpenLabs, enabling cloud developers, and cultivating ICT talent in the Southeast Asia region. It's a huge opportunity for developers to create targeted solutions for industry digitization and grow their own businesses. The company will also hold a special competition in Southeast Asia to provide guidance to local developers. This will include sponsoring the developers who innovate on Huawei Cloud, and will present an award up to US$150,000 to developers who meet established requirements.