As a contributor in 2012, Huawei has been collaborating with CERN openlab for a year on investigating the applicability of new storage techniques and architectures to the processing of high energy physics data from the Large Hadron Collider experiments. Huawei’s cloud storage system was installed at CERN and tested against the gruelling requirements that come with storing and processing the more than 25 petabytes of physics data taken each year. Given the promising results, Huawei decided to become a CERN openlab partner, and hence expand this common R&D programme for a 3-year period, to further develop and test its cloud storage solution. Two computer scientists hired by CERN in the context of this CERN openlab partnership will work on the joint project during this period. Further storage systems will be deployed at CERN over the coming months.