Huawei opened a cloud data centre in Saudi Arabia to improve various services across industry verticals, with plans to promote digital training and business opportunities in line with the country’s digital transformation goals.

In a press release, Huawei stated the cloud facility is located in Riyadh and it will focus on providing secure and reliable cloud services in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. In total, the site is expected to aid the company in launching 68 new services around AI, cloud and big data.

The facility will provide full stack cloud offerings spanning infrastructure, databases to AI services to meet industry demands, and there is a plan for the vendor to utilise its Pangu 3.0 model for various sectors in the country including government, finance and manufacturing.

Huawei added the Riyadh cloud region will cover all existing networks powered by operators Zain, stc and Mobily.

Further, the vendor cited a plan for China and Saudi Arabia to explore other business opportunities and help Chinese enterprises connect with local stakeholders.

It also pledged to train 200,000 developers in Saudi Arabia in the next five years, alongside launching a programme for 2,000 startups and joint opportunities with 1,000 local partners.

The launch of the cloud region in Riyadh builds on an MoU struck in end-2022 by Huawei and the Saudi Arabian government, which aimed to increase investments in the country’s cloud infrastructure.