On the second day of the Huawei Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Congress, the keynote of “Diving into Digital in Industries ” was successfully held. More than 1,000 business elites from various industries and government officers in the Asia Pacific region attended the event, sharing the challenges and practices in using innovative technologies to tackle challenges in digital transformation.
Nicholas Ma, President of Huawei Asia Pacific Enterprise Business, said in his opening speech that the digital economy and digitalization is expanding rapidly in the Asia Pacific region, benefiting from the government’s visionary digital strategy and the joint efforts of participants in a wide range of industries. Huawei predicts that digitalization will transform production systems in all industries, creating potential value of US$27 trillion. “Together with our partners, take the time to truly understand the industries, and then develop tailored solutions to help. We are looking forward to working with our partners to foster an open industry ecosystem and drive shared success in Asia-Pacific.”
At the event, Honorable State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak of Information and Communication Technology Division in Bangladesh delivered a speech. “Bangladesh is emerging into the ICT revolution rapidly and it has been possible due to Innovation and Innovative thinking. Let’s discuss more with developers, industry leaders, and thought leaders how we can create more values to society. Innovation is not just any segregated thing, it combines all and brings out the most impeccable results. Bangladesh will bloom with the power of it and the assistance of the most innovative companies like Huawei. Think Digital, Be Digital, Build Digital” said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, MP.
Dr. Eng. Budi Prawara, Chairman of the Research Organization for Electronics and Informatics, National Research and Innovation Agency, Indonesia, shared that the future world will be defined by how effectively and efficiently we enhance, intensify, and strengthen research and innovation collaboration. Dr. Eng. Budi Prawara further mentioned that they have been collaborating closely with all key stakeholders, especially global technology and innovation leaders like Huawei who shared the AI-related knowledge in 2020 and in line with the National AI Strategy development. He hopes to continue forging a common understanding across the ecosystem to optimize benefits from the global researches and innovations for humanity and society.
Dr. Chalee Asavathiratham, SEVP, Chief Digital Banking Officer of the Siam Commercial Bank, said that “Through the power of data and analytics, we will bring banking to the previously underserved and underbanked. Banking should be effortless, universal, and empathetic. Like a genie from a bottle, banking should just appear to serve you just when you need it.”
Kevin Khoo, CIO of Malaysia’s Sunway Group shared the digital transformation practices, “I think it is crucial to find the right partner who is willing to grow throughout the journey and face all of the challenges together. I am glad that Huawei is one of our partners. We are embarking on Huawei’s digital innovation program and it is going to be a long process — there is a lot of innovations and strategies that we are going to roll out together. I think Huawei shows a lot of commitments by contributing extensive expertise and resources to guide and help us.”
Professor Jeffrey Towson from Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University delivered a keynote speech themed “3 Lessons from Best Digital Businesses in China / Asia”, and he shared that “The last thing you want to do in digital Asia is compete without any advantages. To survive and thrive, you must have moat.”
Wu Beibei, CTO of Huawei Asia Pacific Enterprise, introduced Huawei’s overall industry-oriented capabilities. He shared how Huawei help build a future-ready infrastructure seamlessly integrated with staged business growth, while balancing short-term economic and long-term sustainability factors.
Second day of the congress ended with a thought-provoking panel on “Accelerating Industry Digital Innovation in a VUCA World”, moderated by Hong-Eng Koh, Huawei’s Global Chief Public Services Industry Scientist. The distinguished panelists, Dr. Chalee Asavathiratham (Thailand Siam Commercial Bank), Prof. Jugdutt Singh (Malaysia Sarawak State Government), Donald Lum (Singapore SATS), and Justin Chen (Indonesia Bank Neo Commerce), shared the lessons learnt in their digital transformation journey as well as the key factors of successful digitization.
While the journey and outcome of the different industries’ digital transformation may be different, they face common challenges and require similar critical success factors, including strong leadership, governance, talents, process, collaboration, regulatory compliance, and change management. All panelists also agreed digital transformation should primarily be focused on people and personalization, and data of values are crucial to enable it. The moderator added Huawei helps to reduce the technological complexity through its Intelligent Twins architecture offering intelligent interaction, connectivity, hub/cloud and applications.
Over 2 days of Huawei APAC Digital Innovation Congress, Huawei signed 17 MoUs with industry customers from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Bangladesh for Smart Campus, Data Center, Digital Power, and HUAWEI CLOUD. These MoUs provide the basis for mutual cooperation to accelerate digital transformation in the Asia-Pacific region, and set a benchmark for the development of the APAC digital economy. The cooperation between the industry and Huawei is an indispensable part of the innovation road.
“In Asia-Pacific, for Asia-Pacific”, through continuous innovations, Huawei aimed to be the key contributor to digital economy in Asia-Pacific, through accelerating the digitalization of industries, and seizing the digital economy opportunities with all industry partners together.