At HUAWEI CONNECT 2020, Huawei announced the Intelligent Twins, which is the first time a systematic reference architecture is proposed for the intelligent upgrade of governments and enterprises. Customers and partners of Huawei can build their own intelligent solutions based on the Intelligent Twins to enable intelligent transformation across industries for all-scenario intelligence.
Intelligent Twins leverage cloud as the foundation and AI as the core. With collaboration across the cloud, network, edge, and device, Intelligent Twins enable an intelligent, open system that is capable of all-dimensional perception, all-domain collaboration, precise judgment, and continuous evolution, delivering a smart experience for people, cities, and enterprises in all scenarios.
At this event, Shenzhen and Huawei announced Shenzhen Intelligent Twins. The project aims to build an integrated deep learning system for citywide coordination, enabling a smart city that is perceptive, conscious, evolvable, and familiar. This will turbocharge the intelligent transformation of Shenzhen to new levels. The event was also attended by China University of Petroleum and China FAW Group, with their success cases of Intelligent Twins for the oil and gas industry and manufacturing.
Industries need to overcome multiple challenges before going digital and intelligent. The challenges include disparate terminals, diversified connection requirements, coexistence of old and new IT applications, and AI talent shortage. Combining industry applications with technologies such as connectivity, cloud, AI, and computing helps industries tackle these challenges.
This idea is echoed by Hou Jinlong, President of Cloud & AI BG, Huawei. In his keynote speech Intelligent Twins: Building an Intelligent World Together, Hou said, “Industries are upgrading from ‘go cloud’ to ‘go intelligent’. AI innovation is no longer confined to one single scenario, and bringing intelligence to all scenarios is an irreversible trend.”
Hou continued, “The Intelligent Twins are an integrated system with synergy across five tech domains, integrating the cloud, network, edge, and device. It is perceptive, conscious, actionable, and evolvable. Building on the Intelligent Twins, Huawei will work with partners to accelerate the intelligent upgrade of governments and enterprises, expand the industry market, advance the software and service industries, and unlock the blue ocean of the edge computing industry.”
A four-layer architecture for intelligent interaction, connection, hub, and applications
The Intelligent Twins provide a reference architecture that consists of four layers, including intelligent interaction, connection, hub, and applications. All of these form an intelligent system capable of collaboration across the cloud, network, edge, and device.
Intelligent interaction: Figuratively speaking, this layer is like the outstretched arms of Intelligent Twins. It connects the physical and digital worlds, allowing software, data, and AI algorithms to flow freely across the cloud, edge, and device. The intelligent interaction layer uses the Intelligent EdgeFabric (IEF), an operating system across the edge and cloud, to make the Intelligent Twins perceptive and actionable. IEF can interconnect with various operating systems, such as HarmonyOS, so that the HarmonyOS ecosystem can be easily connected to HUAWEI CLOUD.
- Intelligent connection: This layer is the trunk of Intelligent Twins, connecting the intelligent hub and intelligent interaction layers. It helps the Intelligent Twins cover all scenarios, connect all things, and achieve the collaboration of applications, data, and organizations.
- Intelligent hub: This layer is the brain and decision-making system of the Intelligent Twins. It is built on cloud infrastructure to enable applications, data, and inclusive AI, and support smart applications for all scenarios. The intelligent hub layer is empowered by hybrid cloud, the best foundation for an intelligent upgrade, and AI technologies that catalyze innovation across main business processes with industry know-how.
- Intelligent applications: This layer is the best showcase of the value of the Intelligent Twins. Huawei innovates together with customers and partners to combine ICT technologies with industry expertise, reconstruct user experience, optimize processes, and enable innovation.
Three keys to the Intelligent Twins: Hybrid cloud base, AI enablement, and open ecosystem
Hou Jinlong also shared Huawei’s approach to building Intelligent Twins. Huawei believes that the hybrid cloud base, AI enablement, and open ecosystem are the three keys to building robust Intelligent Twins. Inside the Intelligent Twins, cloud and AI are technologies essential for the intelligent hub.
- Hybrid cloud base: In the intelligent upgrade, many customers want to access rich advanced services, but also wish they have local deployment for data security and regulation compliance, meanwhile retaining their O&M habits. However, traditional private cloud and public cloud solutions cannot fully meet such requirements. The HUAWEI CLOUD hybrid cloud solution synchronizes public cloud capabilities and can be deployed locally. From mixed resources to hybrid capabilities, the solution is aligned with the organization architecture and service processes of governments and enterprises, implementing one
cloud from the perspective of users. - AI enablement: This is the core of the Intelligent Twins. HUAWEI CLOUD makes AI application development easier. HUAWEI CLOUD has released a full-lifecycle knowledge computing solution based on the AI development platform ModelArts, enabling enterprises to build a knowledge computing platform. It uses a series of AI technologies to extract, represent, and collaboratively compute knowledge, and then generates more accurate models and methods to enable machines and people, efficiently combining AI with industry know-how to drive AI into enterprises’ core service systems.
- Open ecosystem: To achieve the goal of all-scenario intelligence through Intelligent Twins, the key is to build a prosperous ecosystem that facilitates all stakeholders to better collaborate. HUAWEI CLOUD is positioned as a neutral cloud service provider. It is committed to building HUAWEI CLOUD into the best SaaS-based service development and operations platform, helping partners achieve business success, and advancing a sustainable software and service industry.
Shenzhen and Huawei announced the Shenzhen Intelligent Twins, advancing Intelligent Twins to more industries Nowadays enterprises across industries are expediting their intelligent transformation to sharpen their edge in the future.
At the event, Shenzhen and Huawei announce the Shenzhen Intelligent Twins. Driven by data as the foundation, Shenzhen Intelligent Twins will leverage emerging technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, IoT, big data, AI, and blockchain to build a system including an intelligent service network, applications, intelligent hub, data interaction system, and intelligent infrastructure. This will build an integrated, data-driven deep learning system for citywide coordination, setting the gold standard for Digital China. Looking ahead, Shenzhen will work with enterprises to build the benchmark smart city, bringing the benefits of a fully smart society to people, businesses, and organizations.
Liu Jiachen (right), Director of Government Services Data Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality, and Hou Jinlong (left) announced the Shenzhen Intelligent Twins
Dr. Xiao Lizhi, Dean of the College of Artificial Intelligence at the China University of Petroleum, introduced the latest application of the Oil and Gas Intelligent Twins.
He said, “The Oil and Gas Intelligent Twins will reimagine the industry chain. The Intelligent Twins will enable intelligent oil and gas fields in the upstream phases for exploration, development, and production; enable intelligent logistics and warehousing in the pipeline and transportation phases, and enable intelligent refineries and gas stations in the downstream of the industry chain.”
Guo Yongfeng, General Manager of the Digital Department from China FAW Group, said that digital transformation plays a critical role in propelling the Group to new heights.
According to Guo, China FAW Group harnesses the HUAWEI CLOUD knowledge computing solution to transform the relationship between people and knowledge, making it easier, more efficient, and more effective to empower people with knowledge. Knowledge computing has helped FAW upskill employees into domain experts, which translates into greater productivity.
So far, Huawei and partners have put Intelligent Twins into practice in more than 600 projects and are advancing Intelligent Twins to a wide range of industries, such as government and public utilities, transportation, industry, energy, finance, healthcare, and scientific research. AI technologies have been incorporated into 11 major business processes of Huawei and applied in 200 scenarios, including R&D, manufacturing, sales, and supply.
Huawei has also fostered 8,000 digital employees to deal with scenarios of mass data volumes, repetitive operations, and complex requirements.
