Huawei Technologies on Wednesday announced a new database management system, in a bid to expand its enterprise business and challenge Western rivals such as Oracle in China, amid growing scrutiny over its main telecom business.
Huawei in a statement said that its new database management software, called GaussDB, is backed by artificial intelligence and works locally as well as on clouds.
The aim of this launch is to redefine data infrastructure through a Data + Intelligence strategy, said David Wang, executive director of the Board and President of ICT Strategy & Marketing at Huawei.
Huawei’s GaussDB and FusionInsight big data solutions have been deployed in 60 countries and regions, serving over 1,500 customers. These two solutions have been adopted by over 500 business partners, and are widely used in industries such as finance, telecoms, government, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation.
Huawei Cloud has launched 13 database services, including data warehouse services on the cloud for industry customers. Huawei FusionStorage was the market leader according to the IDC’s software-defined storage market share report in 2018.
The move comes amid growing scrutiny over Huawei’s main telecom equipment business as Washington tries to persuade its allies that Huawei posed national security risks.
Huawei is trying to grow its nascent enterprise service business, a segment accounting for around 10 percent of its revenue, while its smartphone business continues to grow its share in a shrinking global market, Reuters reported.
Research firm IDC said in a report this month that China’s cloud system and management software market is expected to grow to $650 million in 2023 from $105 million in 2018 driven by growing demand for cloud service. Huawei is the largest player with one fifth of the market, closely followed by U.S. firm VMware.
IDC analyst Thomas Zhou said, “Traditionally, the database market in China is dominated by relationship database, and that market is dominated by foreign players such as Oracle, IBM and Microsoft.
“But this is changing in recent years because of the rapid growth of public cloud services, with many enterprises migrating to the cloud, they also turn to cloud-based databases.”
Alibaba Group is the largest cloud service provider in China with nearly 43 percent of the market, followed by Tencent Cloud, according to IDC.
“Huawei is unlikely to challenge Oracle’s dominant position in traditional, structured database. But that is a stagnant market. The fastest-growing market is in big data platforms,” Zhou said.
U.S. software giant Oracle earlier this month axed more than 900 jobs in China – 60 per cent of its workforce there – as part of a company-wide restructuring, media outlets, including the Financial Times, reported.
