Mobile Unicom Telecom Three major operators to cloud computing

With the launch of China Telecom's sky-wing cloud computing strategy, the three operators ' cloud computing battle has been fully launched.

August 31, China Telecom officially released the Sky Wing cloud computing strategy, brand and solutions, plans to officially launch next year Cloud host, cloud storage and other series of Sky cloud products. In addition to China Telecom, mobile cloud computing platform "big Cloud" has been launched at the end of 2009, China Unicom has also formulated a cloud computing medium and long term development strategy, the main external business to build platform for customers, for the new business transformation to support.

"I believe cloud computing revenue will exceed 10 billion within five years," he said. "At the recent Third China Cloud computing conference," said Huang, dean of the Chinese Mobile Research Institute.

The big three operators in the cloud computing area of the large layout, is bound to promote the development of the entire cloud computing industry. And operators of cloud computing expectations, also a hint of the efforts to avoid pipeline.

But in the "cloud of all" today, in the "cloud computing business applications," The operator of cloud computing how to develop?

The three major operators have "cloud advantage"

In the development of cloud computing industry, the network size and operation ability of operators are the power that can not be neglected.

China Telecom to enter the field of cloud computing, relying on its own network operation strength. In particular, launched in February this year, "Broadband China Light Network City" project, so that telecom can rely on the national coverage of high-speed Internet, transmission network and fiber-optic broadband network, the cloud data center to achieve high-speed interconnection and high-speed access to users, so that cloud computing and broadband integration.

According to China Telecom, China Telecom cloud host and cloud storage services have been tested commercially, will be formally operated next year, the first phase provides 20,000 high-performance virtual host, 2X107GB storage capacity, and can be upgraded according to user needs at any time. Among them, the pilot cloud platform in October 2011 to complete the upgrade to partners to open unified communications, positioning, video surveillance, Machine-to-machine (machine Communications), payment, certification and other network communications and application capabilities, to provide a first-class development environment and application delivery platform. According to the telecommunications sources, China Telecom has relied on Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, the three Institutes of professional science and technology team thousands of, has established China Telecom Cloud Computing Research Center.

For mobile, the cloud computing project reveals the urgency of moving to a future layout. Three operators, mobile in the field of cloud computing early start, its "Big Cloud" project has built more than 1000 nodes of large-scale laboratories, research results used in "Pangu search" and mobile support system and business platform. For mobile, cloud computing "is a very important future direction, I believe within five years (mobile) cloud computing revenue will be more than 10 billion yuan." "said Huang, dean of China Mobile Research Institute.

According to Huang revealed that the mobile has designed a large warehouse-type fifth-generation data Center program, "is currently looking for the north of China is relatively cold, low energy costs, land resources are relatively cheap locations, the computing resources to build up, through optical fiber radiation to the country and even the world." ”

In contrast, China Unicom's cloud computing strategy is somewhat low-key, but also very pragmatic. Fang, vice president of China Unicom Research Institute in a cloud computing internal seminar, stressed: China Unicom based on "cloud computing" services to launch a Dios distributed intelligent open System. This is a system architecture based on the transformation of telecom operators ' business model, Dios is a distributed, intelligent, open and unified system abbreviation, the goal is to distributed storage, distributed computing resources, distributed databases and file systems, based on the cloud network to integrate unified resources to form an on-demand flexibility to expand the capacity, and provide services. In China Unicom's view, "This will be the network of telecommunications resources in the form of cloud computing, as a new trend in the development of telecommunications network." ”

According to Fang, China Unicom will vigorously build an open ecosystem, and further efforts to establish a cloud computing industry Alliance, to increase research and development efforts to achieve the standardization of cloud computing, and ultimately realize the industrialization and flow of cloud computing. According to China Unicom insiders said that China Unicom has joined the cloud computing related international organizations, and in international organizations to put forward their own concepts, in order to occupy a place in the standard.

At present, the three operators combined their own advantages, respectively, put forward their own cloud computing strategy, and increase the strength of development. So the former Huang said: "This year is equivalent to business applications, I think the whole industry still need a bigger push." ”

Avoiding the pipeline of cloud readiness

For operators, cloud computing is more than just cloud computing, which shoulders the responsibility of the operator's transformation.

Mobile Internet era, terminals, platforms, applications have become a new profit point, operators are no longer the core of the industrial chain, in order to avoid increasingly becoming plumbers, operators are seeking a variety of development paths, explore a variety of business models, and actively explore a variety of new business. The core competitiveness of operators in the past is the network advantage, now must be the customer size, mass information, management capacity as an important competitive element.

In fact, cloud computing platform has a certain degree of "let operators avoid pipeline" the important strategic significance. Combined with cloud computing platform, operators can provide more application services and provide cloud services directly to users in the future.

In the launch of the Sky Wing Cloud strategy, China Telecom has articulated the next step: the leader of the intelligent pipeline, the provider of the integrated platform, the content and the participant of the application. In China Telecom, the next step together with the industry chain, service government, enterprises and the public, through the cloud data center, should be a network of pipelines can play a greater role, and realize the transformation of the business model operators. As the China Telecom Mobile Internet Open Cooperation Alliance has just launched the "Create not enjoy, dream together" 2011 Mobile Internet Application Innovation competition, China Telecom has a cloud computing platform, is stepping up the introduction of application innovation.

In the early of this year, Shanghai Telecom's "Two free one gift one speed" high-speed broadband promotional activities, Shanghai Telecom has a gift 100G capacity of the E-cloud storage space services. From January to March, only two months, more than 4,700 users to apply for e-cloud storage space services, "We have not thought e cloud storage services will have so many people to apply," Shanghai Telecom Senior manager Huari to the Times weekly reporter said.

"Even because of the gift of cloud storage services, users to apply for high-speed broadband." "Originally, in Shanghai Telecom's planning, cloud computing services in the early adopters of the government and enterprise users, but the needs of ordinary users let Shanghai Telecom to see the cloud computing services in the general consumer market potential."

Fang, vice president of China Unicom Research Institute, also stressed that the change of telecom carrier's business model should be to the direction of "Communication + information Service", that is, using the basic and safe and credible operation ability of the public communication network, based on the development of broadband communication and cloud computing technology, to form the service of information facilities, information production and information application. This is the real "cloud computing" service.

In fact, in the cloud storage service domain, the operator's bandwidth ability, the network strength, really is lets the consumer be able to be more acceptable the important factor. Now, in the face of the current government, operators and many big companies are actively deploying cloud computing competition, mobile Huang View is very clear, "the real sustainable development of the operator's cloud computing." "Operators have the ability to scale investments, have the power to serve the public, have the credibility and security of information, and should be the infrastructure service provider for cloud computing."

For operators, cloud computing shoulders the responsibility, it is not only an important strategic direction for the future transformation of operators, but also a new battlefield to seek profits. The wrestling between the three operators is bound to be particularly fierce.

The construction of cloud computing should be rational

At the moment, the heat of cloud computing is "all cloud", but how to rationally develop cloud computing? In a recent cloud computing development and policy forum, operators and telecoms experts referred to the word "rationality".

Admittedly, operators have become the driving force behind the development of cloud computing, as Huang said, in foreign countries, telecom operators have entered the mainstream of cloud computing market, but operators do not want to monopolize the entire industry chain. Fang, however, suggests that cloud computing services be graded at the level of cloud infrastructure services and cloud applications.

In contrast, Lin Tao, director of the Ministry of Industry and Telecommunications Research Institute, suggested that operators with cloud computing for individuals, enterprises, government users to provide a set of communications, it and cloud services as one integrated information services, while operators themselves can use cloud computing to cultivate the internal strength of the enterprise's IT resources to improve efficiency and reduce , to provide users with high-quality services, this "both inside and outside" approach, is the operator to deal with the rational attitude of cloud computing.

Similar to this is the approach of China Telecom, China Telecom stressed that the network support capability is restricting the "cloud computing" technology and product development is an important factor, can even say that network capacity is the decision to "cloud computing" service scale development of the core Foundation. Cloud computing services only with the Wired wireless network seamless docking, deep integration to truly bring users a full range of service experience.

"The performance of the broadband network will directly affect the performance of the cloud." "In Lin Tao's view, operators to do infrastructure construction, such as broadband network construction, to provide the most basic and most important network and platform support, this is the key to the development of cloud computing, and innovative applications can be entrusted to innovative enterprises to do, this model allows operators in the cloud computing industry has a rational positioning. Industry analysts believe that this model should also be the core competition for operators when wrestling with cloud computing.

(Responsible editor: Liu Fen)