Jakarta. The world is seeing a faster digital transformation —starting from massive use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to cloud adoption— following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shenzhen-based tech giant Huawei forecasts 97 percent of all large enterprises will implement AI by 2025. AI will also power 77 percent of all cloud applications. According to Huawei's rotating chairman Ken Hu, globally, around 81 percent of enterprises have used cloud technology.

"Originally, our estimates showed that cloud adoption would reach 100 percent for all enterprises by 2025. However, the pandemic has pushed a lot of organizations onto the cloud. We are likely to see full cloud adoption one to two years earlier than we expected," Ken told an online conference on Wednesday.

"The pandemic has pushed a fast forward button for digital transformation around the globe," he added.

Ken sees major digitalization is now not only limited to internet companies, but has expanded to other sectors, such as manufacturing, education, and healthcare.

"Technologies like 5G, AI, cloud, and internet of things [IoT] are refreshing their business models, enhancing their user experience, and driving efficiency," he said. 

Ken revealed Huawei itself is also in full swing with AI adoption. The travel restriction has made it challenging for the company to deploy base stations for mobile networks. Huawei also needs to ensure their engineers are safe from the coronavirus transmission when on the job.

Huawei would normally send a team of engineers to do quality inspections. Thanks to AI, the process now only requires one local team member to take pictures of the base station and upload them onto the cloud. The AI system will then  perform the quality inspection tests.

"This ensures on-time delivery for our customers and keeps our engineers safe," Ken said.

"With this new technology, we were able to deploy more than 50,000 new base stations in Indonesia during the pandemic, both safely and efficiently."

To help industries go digital, Huawei will continue innovating in two areas, namely technology and scenario-based solutions. Huawei has set up 13 joint innovation facilities —known as OpenLabs— worldwide, including Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The smartphone maker is also teaming up with 900 ecosystem partners to incubate different solutions for industrial scenarios.

"To date, we have successfully verified more than 60 solutions in areas from smart retail to smart manufacturing. On the technology side, we are innovating in areas like smart campuses, deterministic networks, hyper-integrated data centers, smart clouds, and green energy to lay the foundation for an intelligent future," Ken said.