Huawei Wins $3m Cloud Computing Contract from UBA

Huawei has won a $3 million cloud computing contract from the United Bank for Africa (UBA), which will see Huawei provide UBA, one of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions, with 200 petabytes of storage, as well as cloud computing solutions.

The deal is particularly notable given IBM’s longstanding stronghold on Nigeria’s banking sector.

UBA reportedly chose Huawei for its more cost-effective and scalable offering, which comes as UBA’s existing infrastructure was reaching capacity.

Zhang Li, VP of Huawei Cloud Africa, said of the deal: “This is a milestone achievement for Huawei Cloud in Nigeria and Africa at large. UBA is a key player in the African banking industry, and we are excited to help them drive digital transformation. We believe this partnership will be a game-changer for the financial sector in Africa.”

The contract will help UBA with its digital transformation efforts and is hoped to improve its operational efficiency, data storage, and customer experience.

UBA had previously relied on IBM and VMware for storage and virtualization technologies. However, VMware’s shift to a subscription model following the acquisition by Broadcom saw licensing costs for UBA nearly triple.

This is the second cloud migration story we have covered this week alone that cites the Broadcom/VMware acquisition as a motivating factor, the other being the University of Waikato.

Other banks in Nigeria including Zenith Bank, Fidelity, Opay, and First Bank are also adopting Huawei’s cloud computing solutions, some opting for a hybrid approach by also using IBM’s technology for critical workloads.

Huawei is reportedly in talks with a least one other major Nigerian bank for cloud and storage services.