Huawei Cloud’s new innovation aims to revolutionise media and entertainment

At the Huawei Cloud Media & Entertainment Forum 2024 on Friday, Victor Luo, director of solution architect at Huawei Cloud Thailand, addressed the challenges media operators face in enhancing audience engagement, streamlining content production, and innovating delivery methods in today's digital and AI-driven landscape.

"Huawei is committed to helping Thailand's media and entertainment industry transform through the use of advanced cloud technologies and robust infrastructure to boost productivity and competitiveness. Cloud is transforming the way content is produced and distributed," he said.

MetaStudio, an advanced cloud-native platform for digital content production, enables real-time user interaction and integrates seamlessly with AI and AI-generated content, unlocking new possibilities in entertainment, e-commerce, and live streaming.

Taylor Lu, vice president of the media services department at Huawei Cloud, added, "With our cloud solutions, media operators can streamline content production, create high-quality digital media, and engage audiences in real-time. We are dedicated to driving innovation and fostering a dynamic digital media ecosystem in Thailand."

MetaStudio offers a one-stop digital content production pipeline, where clients can produce and render digital content, create virtual humans, 3D content, and videos through AI technology. After a single training session in the client's mother tongue, virtual humans can speak more than 20 languages with a lip sync accuracy exceeding 95%.

Huawei Cloud's interactive media network, built on 2,800 CDN edge nodes deployed worldwide, offers more than 180 Tbit/s bandwidth resources for end-to-end live streaming latency lower than 500 milliseconds. Users can interact in live streams, e-commerce, and online games in real time. AI MPC (media processing centre) intelligent encoding and decoding reduce the bit rate by 30% in HD images, saving storage and CDN bandwidth costs whilst improving image details.

Huawei's move comes as Thailand's media and entertainment industry is poised for growth. PwC's Global Media & Entertainment Outlook 2024-2028 projects that the industry will grow by 4% in revenue this year, despite challenges such as economic slowdown, structural issues, and the impact of emerging technologies on business operations.

Luo highlighted Huawei's global sales revenue of $7 billion as of 2023, with capital expenditure trends showing significant growth outside China. He noted the rapid expansion of public cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region, with Huawei ranking third in Thailand's public cloud market and first in hybrid cloud solutions.

"We have established a robust digital foundation for over 1,000 valued customers to support their business transformation," he said, underscoring the company's collaboration with more than 300 local partners.
 

Looking to the future, Luo shared three key directions for Huawei's cloud strategy in Thailand: localisation, innovation, and security. He emphasised Huawei's commitment to building local data centres in Thailand, bringing cutting-edge products to support customers' innovation journeys, and ensuring data localisation for a secure and compliant environment.

Luo reiterated Huawei's commitment to growing talent and supporting customers in the evolving media landscape. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We are here to partner with you in building a transformative cloud ecosystem," he said.

According to Gartner, Huawei ranks third by revenue in Thailand's cloud infrastructure market. Frost & Sullivan reports that Huawei Cloud ranks first in the country's hybrid cloud market.

Since its launch in Thailand on September 30, 2018, Huawei Cloud has introduced over 100 cloud services, built partnerships with over 300 local businesses, and supported thousands of customers. With three availability zones in Thailand, Huawei Cloud also supports local payment options and compliance requirements.

Through initiatives like the GoCloud programme, Huawei Cloud is accelerating digital growth by working with local partners to develop innovative solutions that support Thailand's economic expansion.

Huawei Cloud's vision of "In Thailand, For Thailand" is poised to elevate the country's digital economy and foster new growth opportunities in its media industry. The company also plays a key role in developing Thailand's digital talent, having trained over 96,000 Thai professionals through its ASEAN Academy, empowering the next generation of innovators to leverage cloud technology and drive the nation's digital transformation forward.