China's cloud computing road: exploration while application

By now it seems that the topic of cloud computing has begun to cool down. In the opinion of a very large number of people, the concept of "cloud computing" has always been very empty. It is entirely based on speculation and does not have much practical application prospect. Is it in our country, the cloud computing really can not do "Teng Yun drive fog" to help hand in the field of information technology? As an expert who has always been in it, Dr. Xu Lu, researcher of CAS Institute of Computing and Director of Data Storage Technology Research Institute, expressed his opinion in an interview. "I do not think so. Personally, I am very much Optimistic about cloud computing in China's development prospects. "

Although the concept of cloud computing is proposed in recent years, it is not a completely new concept from the perspective of overall technology. Xu Lu said that as early as the mid-90s of last century and early this century, have similar concepts, such as the "appliance computing" and "grid computing." Now hot, really vanity ingredients. This is nothing less than two reasons: First, the guidance of market suppliers, the cloud computing as "all-encompassing, omnipotent artifact"; second is the consumer's misunderstanding of technology. Recently, the United States has assessed the maturity of cloud computing-related technologies, and the overall evaluation is not high.

"Fortunately, this heat has a downward trend, which is a good thing, indicating that the market has been rational." Xu Lu introduced the United States well-known IT consulting firm Gartne proposed the "hype cycle" theory. The theory of a new technology from production to maturity, and then the market has been widely accepted the whole process of enrichment into five stages, namely the technology of infancy, the expected expansion period, the bubble of the trough, a steady climb of light and real production The peak period. "Now that this heat is going down, it can be said that we are going to enter the bubble-trough period, but do not forget," the darkest before dawn, "at which time it is an opportunity to create a major breakthrough."

Why is it a major opportunity to nurture it? Xu Lu made his own interpretation of the judgment. From the application market, from desktop computers to a variety of hand-held terminals, thriving from a variety of social media to our current push "triple play", "who do not need cloud computing to provide computing resources, storage resources? Huge application market, driving the development of cloud computing technology and applications is inevitable, not to mention, after the bubble removed, we have a deeper understanding of the functional positioning of cloud computing.

See the opportunity, but also to see the challenge. China's cloud computing started late; from the business model, similar to foreign models; but in terms of computing system size, design and control, but also far less than the developed countries. "But we have a large user base, and in many cases our daily traffic is much higher than abroad, and this is a big challenge." Xu Lu is very worried about whether China can meet this challenge.

Xu Lu's worry is by no means worrying. To cope with the challenge of having a larger scale of access than that of the rest of the world, China must make every effort to improve its operation and maintenance capabilities in the data center. "Originally, we lacked the ability to build and experience, and we were unable to keep up with the operation and maintenance. Why did we deal with the challenges?" Xu Lu had done many years of technology in foreign companies and deeply understood the importance attached by foreign companies to operation and maintenance. "Many companies, such as Amazon, spent more than a million dollars a day running O & M expenses many years ago, and the cost of O & M has gone far beyond this figure today." How many of us would think this is a reasonable expense?

In fact, funding is not the only problem. In terms of data centers, both the government and the enterprises have laid out quite a lot, but they are not very considerate about "what exactly is the output?" "Some units will be built the same as the data center infrastructure investment and hardware acquisition, but completely ignored the system operation and maintenance." Lu Xu regretted that "good steel to be used on the edge. In the case of limited funds But also need to balance the consideration.For the application needs, the comprehensive construction of hardware and software infrastructure.Do not pay attention to improving the operation and maintenance capabilities, and ultimately only cost a large sum of money, hurting the healthy development of the industry. "

In the field of cloud computing, it is not just the ability of operation and maintenance that is hard to be affected by the concept but also the application. Public and private agencies and individuals generally have some doubts about their security when choosing cloud services. Xu Lu believes that the security problem does exist, but some of the problems are more about the mentality of personnel. "This is the same as the old saying that people would prefer to keep their property at home and not in a bank." To change this mentality , Also need a process, this process is the process of cloud computing security applications.

Turning to the current status of cloud computing applications in China, Xu Lu said that in terms of the current application model, as far as the overall construction is concerned, there are more applications oriented to private applications, but there are still many problems in universal application. There are both the problem of lack of experience and the influence of cultural differences. However, any application can not be flawless as soon as it is launched. It is necessary to explore and apply applications while driving research and development. Without exploring or using applications, cloud computing will never mature.

To promote the application of cloud computing, it is necessary to set up a platform between technology and applications, including professional international exhibitions such as the International Economic and Technical Cooperation Center of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to hold the first International Forum on Cloud Computing Technology and Applications in Beijing in 2013 , This is a very good communication platform. "Xu Lu said.