Telefónica & Huawei Debut LatAm Public Cloud

Telefónica is debuting a public cloud and cloud services initiative in Chile, Brazil and Mexico in partnership with Huawei, focused on migrating IT services to the cloud.

Telefónica SA (NYSE: TEF)'s Open Cloud is based on OpenStack and hosted in Telefónica 's data centers in the three countries, providing open and secure cloud services, such as computing, storage, networks and databases, to advanced applications, development, security and analysis services. Huawei's hardware and software -- including servers, storage, networking and cloud operating systems -- is supporting Telefónica's Open Cloud and Cloud Server services, and the vendor is also providing technical support.

Telefónica's Cloud Server service, which is already available in the same three LatAm, countries runs on Huawei's FusionSphere gear. Cloud Server makes it possible to deploy a cloud server quickly and easily without much technical knowledge.

Both services were announced Friday.

Under an agreement in fall 2015, Huawei agreed to deploy Telefonica’s Open Cloud service based on OpenStack in eight Telefónica data centers, according to a Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. spokesperson today. "Last year we jointly announced that the first countries where the service would be deployed included Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Another five additional locations will be deployed into next year," the spokesperson said, adding that the partnership also includes a joint cloud innovation center in Spain.

Telefónica and Huawei plan to help enterprises migrate their servers to the cloud, allowing them to use computing, storage and backup services in Telefónica's data centers with no infrastructure investment required and on a pay-per-use basis, said the spokesperson. "We are targeting enterprises that require an easily scalable platform in the cloud at a competitive cost and with full reliability and security. Telefónica will provide end-to-end service management, including the network, storage and data center."

José Luis Gamo, B2B Products and Solutions Director at Telefónica Business Solutions, said in a press release today, "With this release, which represents Telefonica's commitment to an open and secure cloud, we are moving towards our goal of providing the best products for Cloud services, while driving our customers' digital transformation." (See Telefonica, Huawei Launch Open Cloud & Cloud Server in Brazil, Mexico, Chile.)

Helping businesses transform to a digital business is a key initiative for Huawei, whose current CEO Eric Xu focused his keynote at Huawei Connect 2016 a few weeks ago on the topic, and specifically discussed American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson's transformation to a digital business.

"Xu cited an interesting example of a 20th-century company that is recasting itself as a digital enterprise: Harley-Davidson. The company that made the Hells Angels famous -- or was it the other way around? -- is now motoring full tilt toward the digital future" with interconnected production lines, improved assembly line efficiency and shortened order-to-delivery times, wrote Dennis Mendyk, vice president of research, Heavy Reading, in a recent blog. (See A Cloud Full of Harleys.)

As for Open Cloud and Cloud Server, Telefónica and Huawei are motoring next into Peru and Argentina and then to the US. The Huawei spokesperson said that market selection is driven by the needs of Telefónica's international customers in specific markets and added that this partnership is one of several -- the two have partnered to develop smart home solutions for Latin America and have a MoU to cooperate on 5G.

Cloud is one way that service providers are helping enterprises get digital. Service providers are also delivering SD-WAN to help connect remote locations and the cloud. (See Will SD-WANs Buck Past Trends?)

— Elizabeth Miller Coyne, Managing Editor, Light Reading