5.5G and Cloud drive the digital transformation of industry

Published regularly throughout the year, Transform looks at how digital technology is re-shaping the present, while giving readers a glimpse of the future.

In this edition…

It’s all about connections

Know who’s got the fastest internet in Germany? Simone Giertz knows.

The inventor, roboticist, and YouTube celebrity hotfoots it across Europe to find out how tech is transforming daily life. You can follow her journey in “Being Digi-Sapiens,” a documentary series made by Warner Brothers Discovery with support from Huawei.

In Episode One, “Connecting with Ourselves,” Simone checks out über-fast connections in Germany, visits a Finnish sports lab where athletes use tech to improve their performance, and talks to doctors at a 600-year-old Spanish hospital where 3-D printing creates life-sized replicas of the human heart. ?

Simone heads to Málaga, Spain in Episode Two, “Connecting with Others.” You’ll see how Wi-Fi hotspots are spurring entrepreneurs to start new ventures, and how smart manufacturing processes have simplified the wine-making process at a family-owned vineyard in Germany.

The final installment, “Connecting with Nature,” examines technology that helps mitigate climate change by preventing wildfires in Greece.?

Check out all three episodes of the documentary.

Platforms, partnerships fuel success at Ko?Sistem

Huawei and one of Türkiye’s leading IT companies got off to a rocky start.

Ko?Sistem’s CEO, Mehmet Ali Akarca, is blunt. “The first project that we did was terrible,” he says. “It wasn't Huawei’s fault. It was a mismatch with customer requirements.”

The two companies worked through their early difficulties, and today, the partnership is stronger than ever.

That’s a good thing, because digital transformation is crucial for Türkiye. “We're an export country,” Akarca notes. “We need to enable our factories and companies to be as digital as those in any other country.” Türkiye’s digitalization efforts encompass everything from payment systems to electric vehicles to solar energy.

“We service finance, industry, government, retail, insurance, automotive, manufacturing. All these industries require different solutions for their specific problems. If you find your customers’ pain points, then you can really provide a solution. I believe that with Huawei Cloud Services, we will be able to tackle those issues.”

Read the full Transform interview with Mehmet Ali Akarca.

Smart solutions get South African railways back on track

PRASA had a problem. South Africa’s largest operator of passenger rail services couldn’t secure its railyards or the 38,000 kilometers of track that wound their way through its extensive railway network, which provides almost 80% of the country’s passenger transport capacity.

Thieves would break into railyards and make off with expensive gear, or steal valuable components from the tracks. The problem got so bad that PRASA sometimes suspended service.

Help came in the form of a Huawei solution that detects and reports intrusions. Using AI, vibration-sensing optical fiber, and video monitoring, it delivered reliable results even in the face of strong wind and heavy rain, which sometimes confuse other sensing technologies.

Huawei's Smart Transportation unit develops digital railway applications to accelerate service innovation and make railways work better. By making operations more secure and efficient, Huawei is helping PRASA get on the fast track to digitalization.

Read the full Transform story about PRASA or watch the video.

AI accelerates business in Brazil

When Brazilian software company Ramo Sistemas began partnering with Huawei in 2018, the quality of the resources it was able to provide to its customers improved sharply, according to its co-CEO, David Lafer.

“Customers can run the system faster than with the old provider. We can host the whole system under Huawei Cloud. Customers need a good environment to run their system without losing data, 24 hours a day. We can deliver that.”

Having access to a range of AI and cloud solutions is crucial to Ramo’s customers. ??

“They’re looking for productivity, reduced costs, and a better environment to run the system faster,” Lafer says. “They need a system to control their costs and their business. With new functionalities and new knowledge, they’re looking for AI to accelerate their business.”

Read the full Transform interview with David Lafer.

In Madagascar, AI helps boats steer clear of storms

For years, fishermen in Fort-Dauphin, Madagascar, have feared deadly storms at sea. Nearly everyone in the village has a relative who was caught in a sudden storm and drowned.

Until recently, fishermen had no way to get the weather data that would have warned them ahead of time. Regional forecasts weren’t much help.??

But in 2023, a local NGO called Mitao Forecast discovered Huawei Cloud’s Pangu-Weather Model.

Available on a website that provides forecasts in Europe, Pangu is the first AI model capable of predicting weather more accurately than traditional forecasting methods—and doing so 10,000 times faster. ??

In the past, generating a 10-day forecast for the path of a typhoon took four to five hours of simulation. Pangu Weather does it in about 10 seconds.

Since Mitao started using Pangu to improve its forecasts, fishermen’s deaths at sea have been greatly reduced.

“My goal is to take a technology like Pangu all over Madagascar,” says Mitao founder Toky Sylvestre, who lost two relatives to storms in 2009. “After that, I want to take the Mitao Forecast to all of Africa and to the world.”

Watch the video about Huawei Pangu Weather AI.

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