Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei announced that following its entry into the cloud computing market in 2010, the company has decided to establish its information technology product line, mainly providing customized cloud computing solutions.
Huawei announced the news at its Huawei Cloud-computing Conference 2011, which started last week in Shenzhen.
The new IT product line department is related to cloud computing and it will develop IT products based on the cloud platform currently under development by Huawei. Huawei started its massive development within the cloud computing market in 2010. According to Ren Zhengfei, president of Huawei, the cloud computing technologies will change the entire information industry.
A representative from Huawei's new IT product line department told local media that Huawei has spent a long period of time in preparing for the new department. At present, Huawei's revenue from the IT product line is really small compared with other operators, but they will take great efforts to make up the distance. The IT product line market has huge potential and is full of opportunities.
Huawei revealed that it now has strong cloud computing research and development teams, which are made up of over 6,000 employees. These employees are working in many different countries and cities worldwide, including the U.S., Canada, Beijing, Shenzhen, Xi'an, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. In addition, the company plans to further expand the teams to over 10,000 members by 2012.
Rumors are also swirling that Huawei's activities will soon coalesce into a service that will be similar to Amazon's cloud-based Web Services product. At the same time, Alibaba is rumored to be readying a cloud computing service that will also provide an easy way for small and medium-sized businesses to push their services into the cloud.