China's Bid for Dominance in the Cloud: Cloud Valley
Cloud computing is our baby. American companies like Amazon and Google helped to initiate it and now it is burgeoning as more industries, even the snail's paced medical industry, are joining the cloud universe. However, like everything else, "here comes China!" China is not only interested but intending to dominate the field as, it hopes, the century old the refrain of "go west young man," has reverted to "go east to Asia and make your fortune."
So in light of rapid developments trending in the cloud, Beijing is readying itself for the "big time." The city government has had designed and built a 7,800 square meter brick and mortar complex in city south, providing cheap office space and tax breaks to 13 firms which employ around 1000 people. They intend to use it as a base for their cloud industry and in an intentionally "prophetic" move, named it "Cloud Valley," conjuring up notions of Silcon Valley and a beautiful scenic valley located near the base of Huangshan Mountain that is filled with ancient trees, bizarre wind shaped rocks and named after China's mythological dragons. Apparently, the name is resonating because according to the local media, they have received over 1000 orders for cloud servers.
Cloud computing is a term for "technologies that provide computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services." Web applications like Google Docs are convenient and easy because they do away with the need for personal computer storage and or additional storage devices, as everything is done in the cloud.
The sector is receiving major inflows of money from China and in the next five years will take in a majority share of the 2 trillion RMB in IT investments. But that is not surprising. According to IDC, a research firm which has studied China's markets, its cloud computing market is predicted to balloon upwards by 30 percent in the coming year.
Fueled to this end, cities throughout the country, like Shanghai, Shenzhen and even a city in Inner Mongolia are setting up their cloud centers. But the capital's ambitious plans are not to be outdone. They have determined to create 50,000 cloud industry jobs by 2015.
Chinese firms and American firms run their cloud computing according to their political and cultural attitudes. A majority of companies in the U.S. prefer to use public cloud servers, allowing an outside firm to control the cloud so that the companies can focus their attention elsewhere. Chinese firms enjoy private control and like establishing their own private cloud networking, according to Eric Dong, head of product marketing for Supercloud, which has designed cloud systems for some of China’s biggest companies (i.e. Chinese ebay-equivalent Taobao, and China Mobile).
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