Huawei welcomes UST scholars

HUAWEI Philippines organized a virtual event to warmly welcome its first batch of scholars from the University of Santo Tomas (UST), the oldest existing university in Asia.

Thomasian students Hermil Gerard Calasang, Jia Anette Phi, Kryzha Lei Aguilar, Maricar Auditor and Matthew Gabriel Rabanes joined the Huawei family as scholars with a bright future ahead of them.

In her speech, Dean Jerralyn Padua of the UST College of Information and Computing Sciences shared how the pandemic has affected all families in terms of their financial capabilities to support the education of their children. "This opportunity given by the Huawei team is really very helpful for them to be able to continue their education despite the current situation in the country."

Dr. Angelo Dela Cruz, Dean of College of Engineering, considered the scholarship program as "very timely" given the financial difficulties faced by many students amid the pandemic. "Actually, I have just received at least 20 promissory notes last week during our enrollment. We hope the scholarship program will be the beginning of many more activities and programs between Huawei and UST that will ultimately benefit our students."

Prof. Cheryl Peralta, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs, said the program is "a great blessing and a beacon of hope in this very challenging time."

"We believe that effective and productive collaborations help enrich the experience of students and university staff and allow them to do their best in the Now Normal, not only to survive but to thrive in the new opportunities brought about by the rapidly changing world of technology."

Meanwhile, Asst. Prof. Maria Cecilia Tio Cuison, Director of the Office of Student Affairs, expressed her gratitude to Huawei for the opportunity to help Thomasian students realize their dreams. "We owe it to you as a solid partner in the educative mission. You have widened our doors for far-reaching opportunities that pave the way for us to fulfill our envisioned goals, especially to sustain our strong linkage with the industry to expand educational opportunities," Tio Cuison added.

For his part, Huawei Philippines Human Resources Director Peter Zhang congratulated the five scholars, saying they are bound for great things and that they play a key role in helping the society through ICT. Zhang also thanked UST for the partnership: "We look forward to having a continuous cooperation with UST in the coming years and supporting more deserving students as well as the talent ecosystem for the ICT industry."

The scholars are in their fourth and final year in their respective programs. With their passion for technology, they hope to continue their education despite hardships, with the goal of starting a career in the ICT industry soon and being one of those who drive innovation in the country.

At present, Huawei Philippines has 19 scholars from local universities. As a company that values education and talents, Huawei Philippines has been partnering with local universities and colleges to support Filipino students in various ways and help them achieve their aspirations. Huawei advocates for Education4All by providing educational institutions with digital skills workshops and scholarships, among other initiatives.

Master growth hacking, and you might win cash

IT seems almost every day we get bombarded with ads clamoring for us to download the hottest new app that will change our lives.

Need something to track your sleep, or something that can convert images to text? There’s an app for that! How about the note-taking app that’s somehow better than all the others on the market? There are quite a few of that, too! But which app should we get?

How can budding apps compete with already established titans in a market where recognition is everything?

Enter: Growth hacking.

It’s growing, growing, growing

But what exactly is growth hacking?

To put it simply, growth hacking is a strategy where creative tactics are employed in any part of the product development process and consumer journey to focus on growth. For startups and app creators, it’s certainly a viable alternative to reach a larger audience in a shorter period of time at a lower cost compared to traditional marketing.

Shane Shan, director of APAC Huawei Consumer Cloud Service, explains that “creativity at growth” means that developers must have a broader view of the entire process and they should pay close attention to every step in the product and user journey.

Perhaps the most important point of growth hacking, though, is its collaborative nature. It takes the efforts of everyone—from marketers, engineers, developers, to even the end-user—to optimize every step in the process and achieve growth quickly and effectively.

Applying their knowledge

Who better to peel away the curtain than the judges at AppsUP 2021: Huawei HMS App Innovative Contest? They will help budding app developers better understand the mobile app industry.

Nowadays, it’s not enough to just have a useful and creative app. It is also necessary to understand your potential user base by figuring out what they want. And delivering on that promise is an essential part of your app’s development stage.

“To grow your product, especially a video game, good community management is key,” shared Adam Ardisasmita, chief executive officer of Arsanesia.

He recommends having a platform like a Discord server, where users can actively give feedback and suggestions to improve the app.

Having actual user data to support whatever features you change or add to your product is important in ensuring your app’s continued success.

Jojo Flores, co-founder of Plug and Play Tech Center, asserts that app developers should be flexible when it comes to feedback.

I’ve got an app, now what?

Involving creative decisions even in the early stages of development can be a great boon.

Frequent testing from an early stage can prevent last-minute changes later in the timeline that could end up quite costly for both time and budget.

Gwen Guo, chairperson of Singapore Games Association (SGGA), advises new app developers to first study their target market well and then create their marketing plan based on that. Next is to “form relationships with the launch platforms, understand what features these platforms have to boost visibility, whether it’s a featured page, new apps list, or seasonal collections.”

These lists can really help boost their app to a larger audience. Figuring out how they work and using them to their advantage is what makes a user click the download button.

But the types of users are also important. “User engagement is important to sustain the business for an app. Sometimes, a high per-user engagement is better than having more users, which really doesn’t increase value. For example, it’s better to have one million paying users than having 10 million non-paying users,” Flores adds. That’s why over time, apps have updates that encourage increased app usage.

Guo also recommends taking the time to build a community around your app, “Building a nurturing community that not just helps drum up hype for the app but also follows up with responsive support for customers, helping with customer retention and eventually ratings.”

Hack it out with AppsUP 2021

Another common growth hacking strategy is forging partnerships.

“Establishing channel partnerships is one key step in making this (growth) happen, and a partnership with such platforms as the Huawei AppGallery becomes vital to product success,” Flores said.

Since its launch in 2018, the AppGallery now has over 550 million active users globally. And though it’s relatively new to the market, it’s much easier for apps to be noticed in a less saturated platform.

Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) is constantly introducing new features such as AI, AR and analytics in their open capabilities—HMS Core kits to help developers create better user experiences.

“Understanding these tools and their capabilities will be useful for production planning—developers can either create new apps that push the potential of these features or use these features to enhance what they already have in current apps,” Guo said.

HMS’ launch of AppsUP 2021 is a perfect opportunity for developers to take advantage of the HMS Core kits and earn a path to the third-largest mobile ecosystem.

AppsUP 2021 is open to all mobile app developers and app owners, whether they be students, professionals, or startups. Developers must be based in the APAC region and the submitted apps must be developed or integrated with at least one HMS Core kit and published to AppGallery to be eligible.

Don’t miss this opportunity to launch your app to millions of screens across the globe and win from the $200,000 APAC prize pool.

For inquiries, visit AppsUP 2021’s official website at http://bit.ly/appsupapacpc.

Huawei donates PHP10M to PLDT Smart Foundation

CHINESE tech giant Huawei has donated $200,000, or about P10.11 million, to PLDT Smart Foundation (PSF) to help fund the corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs of PLDT Inc. and Smart Communications Inc.

The CSR initiatives for funding to be determined by both PSF and Huawei will include disaster response, rehabilitation and recovery, promotion and enhancement of education in the country, environmental conservation, and the use of technology in health services.

“I would like to thank Huawei for the $200,000 donation to PSF, which will go a long way in supporting our CSR programs like education, disaster relief, environment, telehealth, and many more,” PSF chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said.

PLDT and Smart have been longtime partners with Huawei.

PSF and Huawei’s partnership started years ago when Chinese tech giant donated disaster relief equipment, such as tents, rechargeable lights, and other tools, for PSF’s disaster response program.

It has also contributed 13 sets of school-in-a-bag with Huawei laptops for Smart’s education program, and the recent telehealth equipment for Makati Medical Center and Cardinal Santos hospitals.

Huawei vice president Daniel Guo said the company intends to contribute more to the country through its support to the programs and initiatives of PSF.

Huawei is a leading global provider of ICT infrastructure and smart devices.

It operates in over 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.

“The initiatives were chosen to align with the program sectors of PSF, as well as to highlight the technology solutions of Huawei. These programs are also aligned with Huawei’s overall CSR strategy,” PSF president Ma. Esther Santos said.

“Moving forward, PSF projects will try to inject technology solutions enabled by technology companies Huawei and PLDT-Smart. This is also aligned with PSF’s vision-mission of a connected, empowered, progressive Philippines,” she said.

PSF, which serves as the social outreach arm of PLDT and Smart, has created programs focused on education, livelihood and social enterprise, disaster response and recovery, youth, arts, and sports development.

Huawei names PH among new startup hubs, to invest US$100M for support

A highlight from the Huawei Cloud Spark Founders Summit

SINGAPORE AND HONG KONG--Huawei announced its plan to invest US$100 million in startup support at the inaugural Huawei Cloud Spark Founders Summit, which took place simultaneously in Singapore and Hong Kong. Huawei said the investment would go towards its Spark Program in Asia Pacific region including the Philippines, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem over the next three years. 

Huawei has been helping Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand build their startup hubs. At the summit, Huawei also announced the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, as four additional startup hubs – in with the overarching aim of recruiting a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and shaping 100 of them into scale-ups.

Huawei also launched its Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program, to further ramp up its support for startups around the world. Huawei will devote ongoing efforts and leverage its complete business portfolio in the cloud-plus-cloud collaboration space to foster technological innovation, global and local services, and business ecosystems, accelerating the growth of startups.

Three additional initiatives under the Asia Pacific Spark Program were launched: The Spark Developer Program, which aims to nurture a developer ecosystem powered by Huawei Cloud in the Asia Pacific region; the Spark Pit Stop Program, designed to onboard and support startups on Huawei Cloud to accelerate product development; and the Spark Innovation Program (SIP), focused on facilitating enterprise innovation through the Spark startup ecosystem.

Huawei Senior Vice President and Board Member Catherine Chen opened the summit by emphasizing how important startups are to social advancement and what Huawei is doing to support startups: "Startups and SMEs are the innovators, disruptors, and pioneers of our times. 34 years ago, Huawei was a startup with just 5,000 dollars of registered capital. Recently, we have been thinking: How can we leverage our experience and resources to help more startups address their challenges? Doing so would allow them to seize the opportunities posed by digital transformation, achieve business success, and develop more innovative products and solutions for the world."

Zhang Ping'an, CEO of Huawei's Cloud Business Unit, noted, "Since its launch in 2017, Huawei Cloud has been the world's fastest-growing cloud, and has driven the growth of countless startups. Last year, we launched the Spark Program in Asia Pacific. Through this program, we are working with local governments, leading incubators, well-known VC firms, and top universities to build support platforms for startups in many regions. Now 40 startups are participating in our program."

Zhang continued, "Starting today, we are stepping up our support for startups through four new initiatives, aimed at cloud-plus-cloud collaboration, continuous tech innovation, global and local services, and high-quality business ecosystems. Today, we launched our Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program, through which we will support startups with US$40 million worth of resources. Half of that investment is coming from Huawei Cloud, half from Huawei Mobile Services (HMS). In 2021, our plan is to support 200 startups in the HMS ecosystem, and share our network of channel resources with developers worldwide who together serve 1 billion Huawei device users. In addition, we will open an HMS Developer Innovation Center to support 100,000 HMS cloud-native developers."

Also present was Dr. Lim Jui, CEO of SGInnovate, who said, "The true impact of the Deep Tech Economy is realized when we're able to come together to catalyze new opportunities. Working alongside partners like Huawei enables us to accomplish our mission of supporting promising talent and emerging tech startups in Singapore."

More and more startups are pursuing end-to-end digitalization as they move towards a fully connected, intelligent world. Huawei Cloud infrastructure works in conjunction with Huawei Mobile Services to support startups from all industries. Huawei's cloud offerings help developers and partners to unify accounts, development platforms, and app distribution and operation. HMS is now the world's third largest mobile app ecosystem, and is helping many startups expand their global influence. Currently, 4.5 million developers from over 170 countries and regions rely on HMS.

Huawei recognizes startups as key partners. At the Huawei Cloud Spark Founders Summit, Huawei unveiled the latest data on its innovation research programs with startups. The data shows solid relationships between Huawei and more than 2,000 partners from across the Asia Pacific region, with ongoing initiatives to build support platforms in close partnerships with governments, top VC firms.

Huawei rounded off the series of announcements with a plan to build an HMS Developer Innovation Center. Through this center, Huawei aims to cultivate future talent in cooperation with 210 leading universities across the Asia Pacific region.

Jeffery Liu, President for Asia Pacific Region of Huawei, added that, "For the past two decades, we have remained committed to being 'In Asia Pacific, For Asia Pacific'. Leveraging Huawei's global customer base and full-stack technologies, the Spark Program will invest more than US$100 million over the next three years, and provide comprehensive support to the establishment of a sustainable startup ecosystem that creates new value for this dynamic region."

This summit was attended by representatives from many prominent Asian startups, academia, various industries and governments, and the media, as well as more than 50 regional top venture capitalists and over 300 startup founders. Speeches and panels at the event focused on the social value of this startup ecosystem and how startups can promote technological and ecosystem innovation, to contribute to local communities and drive socioeconomic development.

Huawei sets up digital economy intro webinar

PARTICIPANTS in the webinar entitled “Accelerate Digital Economy for Inclusive Integration in Asia Pacific – Connecting Digital Industries in Pandemic” called for leveraging digital opportunities to build an inclusive ecosystem and promoting regional integration, which is particularly important while still combating the pandemic.

A digital economy is increasingly perceived as the way to overcome disruptions caused by COVID-19. Representatives and thought leaders from governmental, industrial and academic sectors across Asia Pacific joined a virtual conversation organized by Huawei to explore the multiple facets of digital economy, from a market, technology, inclusiveness and sustainability perspective.  

Based on digital knowledge and infrastructure, the digital economy has powered a growing proportion of regional GDP and boosted resilience amid the pandemic. ASEAN predicts the digital economy will contribute 1 trillion US dollars to regional GDP by year 2025. 

Countries from the region have released future-oriented roadmaps on removing trade barriers, improving digital coverage and ensuring ubiquitous access to digital services to facilitate the implementation of the digital economy. 

Being part of the ecosystem, Huawei is committed to enabling ASEAN’s Digital Master Plan 2025 in three key areas, namely ICT connectivity, talent empowerment and ecosystem incubation, according to Jay Chen, Vice President at Huawei Asia Pacific. The digital economy unfolding in the region addresses inclusive access to digital service, a landscape facilitating startup scale-up, and a circular, sustainable economy.

Dr. Alvin P. Ang from Ateneo de Manila University agreed with the openly accessible approach on up-skilling public with digital knowledge. “The education system must put in context at the foundational elements of digitalization. Whether it’s in the basic education level or in the middle ages or those who are working already, trying to learn and upgrade themselves. We have to invest in them and give our rural areas an opportunity to catch up by at least providing them with the basic skills to get through the technology highway,” he said.

Huawei has long recognized the critical importance of providing everyone digital skills and leave no one behind as economies digitalize. Over the years, Huawei has launched multiple programs to train over 100,000 people with ICT empowerment in the region in cooperation with governments, universities, and NGOs. In the Philippines, during the past 4 years, more than 50 Philippine universities joined Huawei ICT Academy, over 6000 students benefited from the ICT training offered by Huawei.

Conveying the business perspective, Professor Jose Decolongon, COO & Managing Director of Corporate Foresight, Embiggen Consulting Philippines said “Micro, small, medium enterprises need to have understanding on digitalization to perceive the opportunities when it comes to exploring the digital side of the business. Challenges are faced by these enterprises but also the large organizations. It's related to coverage and speed of digital infrastructure. This is where telecom players such as Huawei and our local players can play an important role.”

For a sustainable digital economic ecosystem, new technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things and Cloud provide great promise in terms of enhancing de-carbonization and the circular economy. In the Philippines, Huawei has increased investment in sustainable green solutions, leveraging clean power generation, electric transportation, and smart energy storage. 

 “The next five years could see the ASEAN region make giant strides towards becoming a digital society, and the transformation will enable member states to recover faster from the pandemic. Huawei, together with ASEAN partners, is committed to enabling the ASEAN Digital Master Plan 2025 and create new value for the leading digital community and economic bloc,” said Jay.

UE, UV, CIT-U headline new Huawei Academy partners

UE is one of the schools that have become a partner of the Huawei ICT Academy.

HUAWEI Philippines continues to develop, build and strengthen the local ICT talent ecosystem as it welcomes 15 new partner universities and colleges to Huawei ICT Academy. 

In a virtual on-boarding ceremony, Huawei ICT Academy introduced its new partner schools from different parts of the Philippines. In Luzon, the Academy on-boarded the University of the East, STI College Alabang, Southville International School and Colleges, Colegio de Muntinlupa, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Muntinlupa, Southern Luzon Technological College Foundation, Angeles University Foundation and the University of the Assumption.

The Academy also reached the Visayas region with partnerships with the University of the Visayas, Marinduque State College from Luzon and Cebu Institute of Technology University. Further, Huawei brought its ICT Academy initiative to Mindanao through collaborations with Xavier-Ateneo de Cagayan University, Holy Cross of Davao College and Jose Maria College.

In his speech during the ceremony, Mr. Ken Bijianjun, Director for Channel Department of Huawei Philippines Enterprise Business Group, warmly welcomed Huawei's partner schools for the ICT Academy. He said that Huawei ICT Academy is a corporate social responsibility program that deals with opportunities and challenges in the ICT industry. It provides high-quality resources and certification courses in AI, big data, cloud computing, storage, 5G, security and so on for the benefit of both teachers and students. "Huawei cultivates talents for the ICT industry in the whole world. We also hope to build a strong and meaningful talent ecosystem in the Philippines for Filipinos," he added. 

Huawei ICT Academy was launched in the Philippines in 2018, with the University of Southeastern Philippines (USeP) as one of its pioneering partner universities. Dr. Randy S. Gamboa, Dean of USeP's College of Information and Computing, recalled 

USeP's journey with Huawei ICT Academy since joining in 2018. 

"From the designing of the memorandum of understanding to the hosting of the national ICT competition, Huawei and our university have been working together to advance the use of information and computing technologies in education. Sharing this information, generating opportunities and improving the ICT talent ecosystem are our important goals," Dr. Gamboa said. He noted that seven USeP faculty members obtained Huawei Certified Network Associate certification, and three of them are now Huawei Certified Academy Instructor.

Huawei helping BDO's online banking platform

Huawei has been a vital part of BDO's online banking platforms.

THE average person in the Philippines spends more time on the Internet than any other country in the world. Filipinos are online over 11 hours each day, compared to a global average of just six hours.

Indeed, with a total population of more than 100 million, 71 percent of Filipinos are active Internet users, creating the perfect environment to develop the country’s digital economy through Financial Technology (FinTech).

Despite being the most active online, more than 50 million Filipinos—over half the population—do not use any form of online banking.

According to an official government report published in 2019, only 8 percent of Filipino adults have an active online account.

This, combined with the 97 percent of Filipinos who still trade in cash, has created increased risks during the global pandemic when in-person interactions are limited.

In recent years, Huawei has been collaborating closely with the largest bank in the Philippines, Banco De Oro Unibank (BDO), to realize the bank's strategic ambition: to continue improving business efficiency and customer services through digital transformation, in order to bring inclusive finance to more Filipinos.

In April 2021, BDO rolled out BDO Pay, a mobile wallet and contactless payment solution that provides users with convenient and instant access to digital banking services.

On the path toward inclusive digital banking, BDO is actively embracing technological innovation to upgrade its legacy infrastructure, improve its competitive edge, and develop more innovative services across the entire business.

BDO's digital banking expansion is powered by Huawei's OceanStor Dorado All-Flash Storage Solution, which implements a reliable, secure, and future-proofed data-sharing platform that is virtual and in the cloud.

The Huawei Data Management Engine (DME) and OceanStor Dorado Storage make up the foundation of the solution, intelligently safeguarding the data of the bank’s growing customer assets and transaction history.

Overcoming the limitations of a legacy system

BDO’s refresh of its IT infrastructure was largely driven by the increasing capacity requirements that arose as the business grew.

The legacy system was limited in its capacity to fully process and make use of the data resources that could create new value; therefore an upgrade was required.

In addition, the bank was experiencing the effects of siloed IT suites, resulting in storage utilization of less than 40 percent and much lower throughout.

To remove this obstacle, Huawei OceanStor Dorado provides a high Solid-State Drive (SSD) configuration ratio with SmartTier, enabling a 1.3 GB/s bandwidth and significantly improving the performance of the data-sharing platform.

Moreover, OceanStor Dorado features HyperReplication and a Storage Area Network (SAN) + Network-Attached Storage (NAS) unified storage system to meet BDO’s file-sharing and backup requirements.

This helps achieve an active-passive system to protect all business data, from images and voice notes to scanned documents and more.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado also supports flexible service expansion, slashes service rollout times, and accelerates data monetization in storage resource pools. In fact, during a Proof of Concept (PoC) performance test for BDO, the entire backup service time was slashed from two days to just six hours.

In addition to performance requirements, Operations and Maintenance (O&M) was also in need of an upgrade, as the legacy infrastructure lacked an automation orchestration platform.

Over-reliance on manual O&M also made system fault diagnosis complex—not to mention inaccurate—resulting in the maintenance department being flooded with complaints.

Digitizing O&M improved diagnosis, accuracy, and problem-solving efficiency, as well as bringing down related management costs.

Now, using Huawei’s DME, BDO’s storage utilization has been boosted from 40 percent to 70 percent, and the intelligent fault diagnosis capability of the system has seen efficiency soar to 90%.

The DME also manages data resource pools, which are created and configured based on service levels to manage hot, warm, and cold data by layer, using algorithms to automatically convert hot data into warm or even cold data.

Such nonessential data is then stored on lower-cost media to reduce resource waste and improve service efficiency.

Put simply, Huawei DME effectively ensures the full lifecycle management of the storage system, with backup and recovery solutions available to unleash the full value of data.

“During the proof of concept test, I was impressed with the high performance and reliability of Huawei's product. We trust Huawei for its service-centric value, fast response to our demands, and its commitment to continuing to innovate future technologies for the Financial Services Industry. This is why we hope to build long-term cooperation with Huawei,” said Dennis Tangonan, the infrastructure operation head of BDO.

BDO's recent IT infrastructure upgrade and refresh of the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) is another step in the bank’s digital transformation journey.

Meeting the constantly changing demands for capacity and services is at the heart of BDO’s business operations as industries enter the intelligent era.

BDO will continue to innovate its storage system in order to provide the best products and services for its customers.

Alongside BDO, Huawei will continue to support the bank on its digital transformation journey by providing leading-edge services and technology so BDO can maintain its position as the largest bank in the Philippines.