In retail companies, you always seek to combine high performance while maintaining reliable security for payment process and stored data. When evaluating any cloud hosting solution, your first priority is to assess how well it provides you both.
So, let’s assess Huawei Cloud as a new entrant in the Saudi IT market and see if Huawei infrastructure aligns with Your Retail IT Infrastructure.
Due to Saudi data regulations that restrict hosting sensitive data on public clouds, local cloud solutions are essential. Accordingly, Huawei has established a cloud service hub in Riyadh, ensuring compliance with data residency regulations. This local data center joins a growing trend of major cloud providers like Oracle, V2, and soon, Microsoft, setting up shop in the Kingdom.
IT infrastructure has the same components for all industries, but each industry has specific needs. Retail is one of the industries that depend most on both performance and security.
Let’s divide IT infrastructure into computing, networking, storage, and security and see whether Huawei cloud products serve each one of them in retail companies or not.
In retail, processing vast amounts of data and handling fluctuating workloads are constant challenges, especially during peak seasons like holiday sales.
So what components Huawei sets up to handle this:
Elastic Cloud Servers (ECS) automatically distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers to enhance the service capabilities and fault tolerance of applications. This ensures that online stores, inventory management systems, and customer service platforms operate smoothly, even during unexpected surges in demand.
Its key features include:
Huawei Cloud Container Instance (CCI) is a serverless container engine allowing users to deploy containerized applications without managing clusters or servers.
Accordingly, each shop can be managed and updated independently, boosting flexibility and efficiency without disrupting the entire store. This leads to faster updates, enhanced performance, and reduced costs.
Its key features include:
Huawei’s Auto Scaling dynamically adjust computing and bandwidth resources based on real-time demand, ensuring that the PoS systems continue to operate smoothly without delays or downtime.
Its key features include:
Huawei’s Scalable File Service (SFS) provides high-performance NAS file storage with shared access across multiple cloud servers. It is designed to handle large volumes of data with high durability and availability, ensuring that critical information is always accessible when needed.
Its key features include:
Huawei’s Storage Disaster Recovery Service (SDRS) offers cross-AZ and cross-region disaster recovery for ECSs with minimal downtime. It ensures fast service recovery with an RPO of seconds and RTO of minutes, providing reliable, efficient, and cost-effective disaster recovery solutions.
Its key features include:
A reliable network is vital for connecting multiple retail locations securely and efficiently.
Huawei Virtual Private Network (VPN) establishes secure connections between various retail sites and Huawei Cloud, supporting essential features such as:
According to construction’s vast amounts of stored data and the continuous generation of new unstructured data, DLI is a service designed for processing large volumes of unstructured data. This includes sensor data from construction sites and equipment.
Its key features include:
Protecting sensitive customer and business data against cyber threats is a top priority for retail IT managers, requiring comprehensive and advanced security measures.
Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and data encryption are essential to protect sensitive customer information and financial transactions from cyberattacks.
Retailers often manage vast amounts of sensitive customer data, including payment information, making them prime targets for cyberattacks such as ransomware and data breaches. Huawei’s Host Security Service (HSS) mitigates these risks by managing vulnerabilities, maintaining compliance, and protecting against intrusions.
Its key features include:
Huawei’s Cloud Firewall (CFW) is a next-generation, cloud-native firewall designed to meet the specific security needs of the retail industry. It helps retailers who increasingly adopt cloud services for operations, such as inventory management and customer service platforms.
Its key features include:
As more customers engage with retailers online, the risk of attacks like SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and other OWASP top 10 threats grows.
Huawei’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects retail web applications and websites from the increasing threats in the digital retail environment.
Its key features include:
Final Thoughts
As retail companies try to meet both market demands and regulatory requirements, understanding the capabilities and offerings of cloud providers like Huawei is be crucial. IT managers need to think about the good things new technology can do for their company, but they also need to make sure it helps the company reach its goals. This way, they can make smart choices that will help the company grow in a world that’s becoming more and more digital.