Huawei founder urges shift to software to counter U.S. sanctions
The HinduFounder of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Ren Zhengfei has called on the company's staff to "dare to lead the world" in software as the company seeks growth beyond the hardware operations that U.S. sanctions have crippled. Ren said in the memo the company was focusing on software because future development in the field is fundamentally" outside of U.S. control and we will have greater independence and autonomy". OPEN SOURCE APPROACH Ren's note also said the software push would depend on finding the right business model and that the company should adopt an open source approach, calling on staff to "absorb nutrients" through open source communities. He said the company's Welink business communication platform had relied on traditional software licensing, which was unsuited to cloud computing and inferior to a rival product from tech giant Alibaba.