上周，中国华为公司（Huawei）宣布斥资60亿美元从博通（Broadcom）、高通（Qualcomm）和安华高科技（Avago Technologies）采购处理器和其他组件。这是华为向美国企业示好的最新举措。过去几年，华为一直在努力改变公司的形象，希望从一个不按规矩出牌的庞大、糟糕的网络供应商，转变成一家透明、守法和创新的科技企业。但对于这家中国公司的产品安全性，许多美国政府部门仍心存疑虑。此外，思科（Cisco）等美国竞争对手肯定会延续在海外市场的做法，想方设法阻止华为抢夺它们在美国本土市场的份额。

    华为北美研发部总经理约翰•罗斯接受采访时表示，投资于创新是华为改变公司形象的关键。同时，他还称，不论美国是否喜欢华为，他们都不会退出这个市场。笔者近期采访了罗斯，并参观了华为的硅谷研发中心，一探华为进军美国市场的决心。

《财富》杂志（Fortune）：华为与美国公司一直存在一些法律纠纷，同时也因为向伊朗和塔利班出售产品而备受谴责。那么，华为打算怎么改变这种形象？

    罗斯：人们总是从历史的角度来看待华为和我们的事业，甚至用一种歧视和无知的态度来对待我们。而现在，我们已经开始着手围绕创新来向外界传达公司的形象。一方面，人们会听到各种干扰视听“杂音”，但另一方面，也会听到关于华为创新的故事。1999年或2004年的时候，“杂音”中的一些信息或许确实存在，但在对行业运作方式和科技发展趋势有了真正了解之后，许多假设自然不攻而破。如果当初有人试图以“保护”之名阻止美国市场使用外国技术，我们今天也就不会有手机网络了。我们也根本无法建设各种基础设施，因为这些基础设施全部来自跨国公司。即便美国自己的公司也覆盖全球，它们的技术开发工作在其他国家进行，它们的产品制造可能与华为的产品一样都由同一家工厂完成。即便美国不喜欢华为，华为依然会对美国保持耐心。如果最优秀的技术和最佳创新均源自华为，到那时，美国对华为的排斥将使其失去竞争优势。我们只不过是诸多跨国企业中的一个，与公众熟知的那些跨国企业没有什么区别。只不过，你们对华为的了解还不够。而我的工作就是帮助外界了解我们是谁，我们在做什么。

    Last week, China-based Huawei unveiled its latest effort to make nice with corporate America, announcing it will spend more than $6 billion on processors and other components from Broadcom (BRCM), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Avago Technologies (AVGO). The company has spent the last few years trying to reshape its image as a big, bad network provider that doesn't play by the rules into a transparent, law abiding and innovative technology player. But many government officials are still skeptical of the security of the Chinese company's products, and you can bet U.S. competitors like Cisco (CSCO) will do anything to keep Huawei from eating their lunch here (like they do abroad).

    John Roese, general manager of Huawei's North American R&D division says investing in innovation is the key to changing the company's image. But he also says that whether America likes them or not, Huawei is here to stay. I recently caught up with Roese -- and toured Huawei's Silicon Valley R&D center -- to find out more about the company's push into the U.S. market.

Fortune: You've had legal issues with U.S. companies and have been criticized for selling to Iran and the Taliban. How are you trying to change this image?

    Roese: There is a historical perspective and maybe even a biased and uninformed perspective of who Huawei is and what we do. We're now beginning to communicate our role around innovation. You can hear all of the noise, it's loud and very disruptive, but on the other side you start to hear a story about innovation. The information on the noise side might have been true in 1999 or 2004 but today if you really understand how the industry operates and what's going on in technology, many of those assumptions do not apply. If someone were to try and protect the US market from foreign technology none of us would have a cellular network. We wouldn't be able to build these infrastructures because these infrastructures come from global companies. Even the companies that are in the US are spread out across the globe -- their technologies are developed in other countries, their manufacturing is in the same factories that our manufacturing comes from. But we're very patient in the U.S. Even if you don't like us, at some point if the best technology and the best innovation is coming from Huawei, eventually it becomes a competitive disadvantage for your country to avoid it. We are just another global entity. We are just like any of the global entities that you know of. You just don't know us that well. My job is to try and help teach who we are and what we do.

目前，华为在北美采取的是何种策略？

    几年前的华为经历了一段顺畅的发展期。公司超乎寻常的表现让所有竞争对手都感受到了冲击。但问题在于，如果表现这么出色，公司就不再是追随者了，对创新的预期值也会提高——因此，必须扮演定义互联网行业的角色。所以，公司的决策之一是，创新不能仅在中国国内进行。如果公司希望广泛涉猎从云技术到光电技术的一切领域，就必须制定范围更广的创新策略。2010年，我加入公司时，大约只有300人，而今华为美国市场员工已达到1,000人，而且全都是资深技术人才。我们希望成为公司发展的急先锋。我们不考虑公司之前的或现有的项目，我们只想知道行业未来的发展趋势，比如是开发下一代网络处理器，还是步入云时代。与此同时，公司把美国市场视为最后的新兴市场。没有一家公司会把总部设在一个无任何业务联系的国家。另一方面，虽然华为仍在不断摸索和努力适应美国市场，但公司已经在这一市场投入了大量的研发能力。

华为目前在美国市场的经营状况如何？

    我之前将美国市场称为“发展中”市场，曾引广泛反响。思科或爱立信（Ericsson）等大部分公司，都将中国视为一个发展中市场，但我们却认为美国市场正处于发展之中。当然，这并不是说美国市场不够发达，而是说我们需要学会如何去适应这这个市场，这对我们来说是个新的课题。虽然公司从美国市场获得的收入流并不显著，但我们在研发方面却取得了很大的进展。去年，单是华为对美国市场的研发投资一项便高达2亿至3亿美元。公司的终端业务表现不错，在商店里也可以买到华为自有品牌的平板电脑和智能手机。公司的运营商业务也比较顺利，不过，与美国四大运营商的合作目前还未能实现。但我们仍在不懈努力。如今，我们已经打入了美国的企业市场。这是一次全新的突破，但华为要想建立起关键的客户群仍需耗费数年时间。

你们的研发中心目前的攻克重点是哪些技术？

    最重要的研发目标是云计算技术。数据中心虚拟化是个不错的主意。但这并非我们研发云计算技术的真正目的。云计算技术的真正目标是，建立一个全互联网规模的公用环境，而非仅限于数据中心。所以，我们的工作就是重新思考如何步入云时代。我们如何才能实现云技术不仅服务于传统数据中心的虚拟化，而且广泛应用于无线接入网络、无线环境、网络基础架构、企业环境等。如果这些都能实现虚拟化，我们就可以开始考虑在互联网上提供服务。此外，我们也在致力于其他技术的研发，诸如高速网络、电子教育或电子医疗等。

    译者：阿龙/汪皓

What's the current strategy in North America?

    A few years ago Huawei was going through a cathartic moment. They had done an exceptional job out-executing everybody. The problem is that if you do that very well eventually you are no longer a follower, and the expectation to innovate is significantly higher—you have to define the networking industry. So one of the decisions they made was that that innovation could not exclusively happen in China, because if we're going to do everything from cloud to photonics, we better figure out an innovation strategy that's going to be much broader. When I walked in the door [in 2010] we had roughly 300 people, now we're at about 1,000, and they're all senior-level technical staff. We want to be the tip of the arrow. We don't care about previous or existing projects, we want to know where the industry is going, whether it's developing the next network processor or navigating the cloud era. At the same time, we are in market that the company views as our last emerging market. Nobody would put their headquarters in a country they have no business in. We on the other hand have put a lot of our R&D capacity in the center of a market that we're still figuring out how to navigate.

How are you doing in the U.S.?

    I got a lot of reactions because I once called the U.S. a "developing" market. Most companies like Cisco or Ericsson look at China as a developing market, but for us we look at the U.S. as a developing market. It's not that it's an undeveloped market, it's just that learning how to navigate it is new to us. But even though the revenue stream is not significant from the U.S. you can see that we're fully engaged on the R&D side. Huawei spent between $200 million to $300 million in the U.S. just on R&D last year. We're doing very well in our terminal business and you can buy Huawei tablets and smartphones in stores. The carrier business has done okay for us but we're largely excluded from the top four operators. But we're persistent. We've now entered the enterprise market in the U.S. That's brand new and it will take a couple of years to build up our critical mass there.

What kind of technologies are your labs working on?

    The biggest thing is cloud. Like virtualizing the data center is a good idea but if that's cloud we have wildly undershot. The real objective of the cloud is to build this utility-based environment that is internet scale, that is not just the data center. So what we're doing here is we're rethinking how we can navigate that cloud era. How can we get to a point where the cloud is not just to a traditional data center virtualized but it's actually includes the radio access networks, the wireless environments, the internet infrastructure, the enterprise environments. If all of it is virtualized then you can start thinking very intelligently about placing services anywhere on the internet. There's lots of other things like faster networks. We're also rethinking things like e-education or e-healthcare.