Huawei has announced the launch of its OpenLab Dubai, its first to serve customers and partners in the Middle East, and a part of Huawei’s Global OpenLab program.
The Chinese firm plans to add seven new OpenLabs across the world in 2017, and has announced that it will invest $200 million and add nearly 1,000 people globally in the next three years, bringing the total number of OpenLabs to 20 by 2019.
OpenLab Dubai aims to give customers a hands-on experience of public safety, smart city, oil and gas solutions, and has been jointly launched with more than 30 solutions and over 20 partners.
OpenLab Dubai has a mandate to provide “innovative solutions for IoT, cloud computing, large data, intelligent analysis, eLTE, converged communications and other new technologies to build public safety, smart city and oil and gas solutions.” The initiative has attracted YITU, Zenith, Walkbase, 7G , IOmniscient, Nedap, Richfit and more than 20 other partners.
With the “Platform + Ecosystem, accelerate the Middle East digital transformation of the industry”, OpenLab Dubai brings together partners and customers from around the world to discuss the importance of collaboration in the development of a local digital ecosystem.
At the launch ceremony, Fan Siyong, Huawei’s president of its public sector business, said, “The digital transformation is causing disruption across every industry. Huawei has established OpenLabs across the world with the theme “platform + ecosystem”, and is committed to working with global multi-specialty and industry partners to build customer-centric, innovative industry solutions to promote digital transformation and promote ecosystem development through the creation of an ‘open, flexible and safe’ platform that fully supports the ecosystem.”
“The special climate, resources, culture and industry in the Middle East pose different challenges compared to other regions,” said Xijiang Lin, director of Huawei Enterprise Business Group’s Middle East Solution Development Center. “OpenLab Dubai will aggregate the world’s best resources to meet local digital transformation needs, and continuously enhance the ICT platform capabilities and development of local ecosystems. OpenLab Dubai is focused on building capabilities to easily apply technical solutions in the actual network environment; developing competitive, commercially viable and industry-oriented solutions.”
Huawei is working with YITU, Zenith and other partners, for face and license plate recognition, population density analysis, public opinion analysis solutions, while it is working with Esri in data management to jointly build intelligent parking, intelligent buildings, smart meters and intelligent lights.
In terms of its oil and gas offerings, Huawei will combine 4G wireless broadband network eLTE with Honeywell and Emerson’s various oilfield sensing devices to provide digital field-wide connection solutions to tackle real-time communication problems and assist oilfield visualisation production, improve oil recovery and reduce security risks.
