Peter Zhou, president of Huawei’s data storage product line (pictured), expressed confidence his unit could capitalise on the need to support ever growing AI deployments during an event hosted by the vendor in Munich, Germany this week.
At its Innovative Data Infrastructure Forum 2025 event, Zhou and other Huawei representatives highlighted AI’s requirement for reliable and accessible data, alongside the need for increasingly robust and secure data storage.
During a media session, the executive said as countries and companies compete in a global race for AI leadership, “a very important thing for them to win this game is making sure the data is ready”.
“AI makes data more important: it becomes an asset,” Zhou added, noting currently fewer “organisations consider putting data into the public cloud, as an example, because they say that…ruins their advantage of owning the data”.
He also pointed to AI creating challenges in this area, including a requirement to ensure the increased data centre capacity needed for it had low total cost of ownership.
Several general challenges related to AI were identified during the event, including the fact the hugely hyped technology was not always a force for good and could be deployed for criminal activity, upping the need for secure infrastructure.
It was also highlighted many AI applications, especially generative versions, consume significant amounts of power.
On the latter, Zhou acknowledged currently “AI consumes too much energy”, but played down these fears for the long term, backing continued evolution of the technology.
He also noted for many companies it is important to get the groundwork done first as “people need time to find use cases and, a very important thing, you need time to make a database”.
Lakes
During the event the company launched the latest products in its data storage line, which focus on providing the means for organisations to create data lakes and encourage a shift for enterprises to all-flash storage systems.
Speaking at the opening keynote, president of Huawei’s European Enterprise Business Willi Song (pictured, below) noted the company’s data storage solutions had more than 26,000 customers across 150 countries, including on the host continent for the event.
He highlighted more than half of the top 100 banks in the world use its equipment.
“Looking ahead we will keep promoting a strategy of using all flash and advanced semiconductor SSDs to build data centres,” he added.
Song highlighted “we truly believe science has no borders and data is its lifeblood”, noting Huawei’s products could create unified shared data lakes to support education and scientific research.
“Europe is one of Huawei’s most important markets. We will stay true to our In Europe, For Europe strategy and strengthen our collaboration within all sections in this region.”