Since Huawei Cloud’s arrival in South Africa in 2018, the international cloud giant has been actively growing its partner network – now topping around 450 partners in South Africa and 3,000 partners across sub-Saharan Africa.
For these partners, the Huawei Cloud value proposition has meant business growth and happy customers.
Diego Han, Director of Eco-System Development for Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa, says Huawei Cloud’s ‘partner-first’ ethos, advanced technology and infrastructure investments in the region have made Huawei Cloud a partner of choice for resellers and systems integrators seeking growth.
Han explains that the Huawei Cloud Partner Network (HCPN) programme offers a range of above-average incentives and rebates, technical and marketing support, and – importantly – gives partners access to Huawei Cloud’s cutting edge technologies first.
First-to-market with cutting edge innovations
“Huawei Cloud launched as an independent brand in South Africa in 2017 and just a year later, we chose to open up our data centre in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Huawei Cloud also has three local availability zones in South Africa, making this a Tier 1 region for us.
That means that each time we launch a new solution or new technology on our platform, the South African region will be first to have access to our newest technology and solutions,” he says.
Go Cloud, Grow Cloud with Huawei Cloud
Huawei Cloud has two main frameworks within its HCPN – Grow Cloud and Go Cloud.
The Grow Cloud framework gives partners the support and resources they need to develop new cloud-based business opportunities and expand their service offerings.
The Go Cloud programme helps partners and their customers transition to Huawei’s cloud platform, providing support and tools for this migration.
Within the Go Cloud framework, partners are empowered through support and training to grow in a selected direction.
They may opt to become a software partner who develops applications and software solutions based on Huawei Cloud, a service partner who provides cloud migration consulting and implementation, O&M, and managed services, or a system integrator who provides digital transformation consulting and system integration based on Huawei Cloud.
Han says this certification training is delivered both remotely and in-person at Huawei Cloud’s regional headquarters.
In the past two to three years, over 540 participants have been certified as experts in South Africa.
Han says: “The Go Cloud framework empowers partners to go through our certification and validations and helps them build joint solutions based on Huawei Cloud capability and our massive portfolio on different cloud solutions.”
“Our platform is a pure cloud native and AI native public cloud platform, so they will gain the ability to build and deliver secure, reliable and cutting-edge solutions to their customers.”
Business benefits for partners
The benefits for HCPN partners are measurable, Han says.
“We provide a very stable and predictable partner policy and framework. Our philosophy in this market is partner-first because Huawei is primarily a technology company and we don’t compete with partners.”
“This means that we need our local partners to deliver on local projects and grow our market in the region. As a foreign brand in this market, we depend on the experience and long-term customer relationships our partners have built in the region.”
“Together, we bring to market a comprehensive cloud portfolio of world-class, cutting edge technology and solutions, and local support, integration and customer relationships,” he says.
“We provide a very aggressive partner rebate policy and incentive programmes,” Han notes.
“Huawei Cloud is able to do this because we built our own cloud infrastructure, we provide the chipsets, hardware and facilities, which means we have a great advantage in terms of cost savings.”
“This allows us to not only improve the customer experience, but also provide major margins and incentive rebates to our partners, which helps them grow their business.”
He cites the example of prime distributor First Distribution, who partnered with Huawei Cloud some years ago.
“By leveraging our partner-first strategy and our wide array of services, they are able to offer their own reseller partners a very comprehensive cloud portfolio. For Huawei Cloud and our partner, this has proven very successful and helped to accelerate our growth in the market.”
Han says: “Our partner business grows on average 65% year-on-year, and the growth of our business is way bigger than that – roughly 150% to 200% year-on-year over the past five years.”
“This is pretty strong growth compared to other hyperscalers in this market, but then, we set up a very high target because we believe there are many opportunities in the local market that we haven’t tapped into yet.”
Room for growth
While Huawei Cloud has made strong inroads into sectors such as financial services and the public sector, Han sees significant opportunities for growth into sectors such as mining, retail, manufacturing and media.
He says: “There are many industries we are moving to explore, together with our partners. This also means there are opportunities for new partners to join our network if they have capabilities and relationships with these sectors.”
Prospective partners can arrange workshops and deep dives into Huawei Cloud’s capabilities, Han says.
“We have an exhibition hall and Innovation Centre at our headquarters in Woodmead, Johannesburg, where prospective partners can learn more about our technologies, use cases and success stories.”
“We can also provide first stage support in POCs, demos and landing zone preparations, to help launch their partnerships with Huawei Cloud.”
Click here to learn more about becoming a Huawei Cloud Partner.
