Open Season
CNME|July 2017

Huawei’s recently launched OpenLab Dubai now sits as its regional hands-on hub for experiencing public safety, smart city and oil and gas solutions. The firm’s regional managing director and vice president of its Enterprise Business Group, Alaa Elshimy, explains how the Lab can benefit potential customers in their decision-making and technology education.

Alaa Elshimy
Open Season

Why has Huawei homed in on oil and gas, safe city and smart city solutions for its Dubai OpenLab?

The OpenLabs solutions across the world are similar. We try to understand each market and its needs. We are in the era of industrial digital transformation, and this is a key reason for us making this particular investment.

The Middle East represents one of the biggest regions in the world for oil and gas production, and this industry in particular is in need of digital transformation. We’ve leveraged other ecosystem players to come up with new solutions.

Huawei is focusing on public safety across the globe, and safety is becoming a priority worldwide, and particularly for the Middle East.

In terms of smart cities, our work in the OpenLab encompasses the broader transformation that is going on, and includes smart education and transport. The objective is to make the lives of citizens easier and to make them happier; to my knowledge, the UAE is the only country on earth with a minister of happiness. Smart education allows for students to attend a class from anywhere without physically being in a classroom. Aggregated systems also allow easy assessments of the students’ and teachers’ performance with clearly displayed KPIs.

Is digital transformation in the oil and gas industry a realistic prospect given the tough times it has faced?

Oil and gas companies may spend more today on technology, but when they look at the TCO and ROI, they will save money in the next 3-5 years. When you start to have automated asset management, you have better control and utilisation of your assets.

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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة July 2017 من CNME.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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