Huawei redefines data infrastructure. Here are the answers to five questions that the industry should be concerned about!

[51CTO.com original article] On May 15, Huawei released the AI-Native database GaussDB and the industry's best distributed storage FusionStorage 8.0 to the world at the Beijing Research Institute Exhibition Center, adhering to the concept of "data + intelligence" to redefine data infrastructure. At the press conference, Huawei Executive Director and President of Huawei ICT Strategy and Marketing Wang Tao delivered a keynote speech entitled "Moving Towards the Intelligent Era, Redefining Data Infrastructure", and also elaborated on Huawei's new ideas on how to develop in the intelligent era. He pointed out that mankind is entering the intelligent era, data has become a new means of production, intelligence has become a new productivity, and heterogeneous, intelligent and integrated databases will become the key pillars of data infrastructure in various industries such as finance, government, and telecommunications.

During the press conference, many senior executives of Huawei also accepted interviews with the media, responding to many topics of concern to the industry one by one, and more clearly revealing the thinking and R&D process behind the new product launch.

Q: Is Huawei ready to enhance its “soft power”?

Answer: Yes, algorithms and software are Huawei's core competitiveness in the ICT field.

According to Wang Tao, since Huawei changed its vision in 2017 to bring the digital world to everyone, every family, and every organization, and build an intelligent world where everything is connected, Huawei has paid special attention to the improvement of "soft power". Currently, among Huawei's nearly 90,000 R&D team, more than 70% are engaged in software. Algorithms and software are the core competitiveness of Huawei in the ICT field. "The future intelligent world must be an environment of close cooperation among multiple parties including hardware, software, and ecological partners. In the past, Huawei's products were more presented in hardware, but now, based on Huawei's new vision and goals, they will be more presented in the software field, which is why the database product is released so grandly this time."

Q: Why did Huawei choose to launch new products at this time?

Answer: Huawei has been working on this for nine years

When asked by reporters why the new product was released at this time, Huang Jin, vice president of Huawei's IT product line, said that Huawei had established a research and development team for the Gauss database as early as 2011. After nine years of polishing, Huawei presented it as a complete product for the first time, and has released 13 database products on Huawei Cloud. "Today, Gauss is no longer an embedded component of Huawei products, but should become an important part of the entire IT and cloud, and even CT (communication technology) solutions." He then emphasized that the release of GaussDB this time is to work with partners to expand the industry space, jointly solve the challenges faced by customers, improve the industry ecosystem, and truly build an intelligent world where everything is connected.

Q: Will Huawei's storage product line be integrated in the future?

A: Undoubtedly yes

Meng Guangbin, president of Huawei's storage product line, said that the main positioning of the newly released FusionStorage 8.0 is to redefine the foundation of data infrastructure, which is very critical. Huawei's proposal of one data center and one set of storage is not only a technical pursuit, but also meets the inevitable demands of customers in massive data storage and welcoming the intelligent era.

From the perspective of the entire business and organization, Huawei has been integrating at two levels: first, gradually integrating the traditional 9000 including distributed storage into FusionStorage; second, integrating the massive storage and analysis of data from the business and organization perspective. In the future, storage and data analysis, including databases, big data, and AI, will be integrated into a business organization such as intelligent data infrastructure, and the product line will be changed to intelligent data and storage product line. The ultimate goal is to provide customers with a comprehensive data infrastructure solution.

Q: Is GaussDB a customized solution?

Answer: It is a general distributed database, but it can be applied to many industries.

Huawei's top database scientist Li Guoliang pointed out that GaussDB is a general-purpose distributed database that can meet a series of requirements of traditional enterprises such as high reliability, high performance, and low latency. Therefore, this product is now fully used in large industry markets such as finance and energy through 13 database services in four major categories and transactional databases under the cloud.

Li Guoliang told reporters that in addition to meeting the needs of traditional database vendors, Huawei also has three innovations:

The first is AI innovation. Huawei was the first to integrate AI technology into distributed databases, which can solve many traditional database operation and maintenance problems, reduce maintenance costs, and provide database services more intelligently and stably.

The second is integrated innovation. Traditional databases can only achieve structural innovation, but the new products released this time can expand the entire industry space through integration, integrating multiple data such as structure, graph, flow, text, space, and image, thereby expanding the space of the entire data analysis field, and truly achieve cooperation, openness, and win-win with partners and customers.

*** is the innovation of supporting heterogeneous computing. Huawei database can support new devices such as ARM, AI chips, GPU, NPU, etc., which can release more power of traditional databases, open up computing channels, and better serve applications.

Q: What are Huawei's expectations for GaussDB and FusionStorage 8.0?

Answer: Become an important platform to help customers move towards the intelligent era

Huang Jin told reporters that analysts' reports previously pointed out that the global data service market will exceed 55 billion US dollars. Huawei believes that the potential should be even greater. Therefore, less than 2% of the data in today's society is saved, and less than 10% of the data is analyzed and applied. If there is a better data platform, it can realize better value for customers and do a good job in this industry. Huawei believes that heterogeneous, intelligent and integrated databases will become the key pillars of data infrastructure in various industries. Huawei hopes to solve customers' challenges and seize opportunities for industry development through it.

In the past, Huawei has invested 1,500 people in a research and development team to conduct research and development in the database field. In the future, it will continue to increase investment in this area and build an important platform to help customers move towards the intelligent era.

People familiar with Huawei know that in the past, whenever Huawei entered any field, it hoped to bring special value to the field through the power of Huawei's innovation and drive the development of the entire field. Obviously, Huawei's thinking is the same in the database field this time. The new database products released by Huawei this time, whether as enterprise-level database products or as database services on Huawei Cloud, can greatly refresh the original user experience in the industry. The reporter hopes that under the leadership of Huawei, more and more peers will join in to better welcome the intelligent era.

[51CTO original article, please indicate the original author and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]