Adjusting policy support way to promote the healthy development of cloud computing industry

As a new general purpose technology, cloud computing has a good prospect both at home and abroad, and it may bring new growth point for economy. Therefore, the relevant government departments and industry in the development of cloud computing services are very positive attitude, but also made a lot of efforts. However, from the recent two years of China's cloud computing technology applications and industrial development practice, there has been a trend of overheating. Need to clearly understand the inherent characteristics of cloud computing industry and the development of law, timely adjustment of the focus of policy support and ways to guide the healthy development of this new industries.

Cloud computing industry booms and overheating worries coexist

Since the State Council's decision to speed up the cultivation and development of strategic emerging industries in the "new generation of information technology" in the field of explicit development of cloud computing, the Ministry of Industry and the National Development and Reform Commission in October 2010 jointly issued the "Cloud Computing services innovation and development of the pilot demonstration work," confirmed in Beijing, Hangzhou, Wuxi, 5 cities in the first to carry out cloud computing services innovation and Development pilot demonstration work, and set up a cloud computing demonstration project special funds. These policies have played an active role in promoting the beginning and rapid development of cloud computing industry. On the other hand, governments around the world are more enthusiastic about developing cloud computing than expected, and the "bubble" worries of repeated construction have emerged.

At present, the scope of the application of demonstration projects has already surpassed the 5 pilot cities. Most of the region, including the Midwest, has proposed major projects to develop cloud computing and build a cloud computing base, with investment of billions of per cent and an impressive footprint, and some places have also proposed building "Asia's largest", "China's largest" cloud computing base, and other slogans. Individual county-level regions put forward the construction of a total investment of nearly 200 billion yuan, the total amount of more than 5 million servers in the cloud Computing data center of the grand plan, and put forward the formation of more than 80 billion yuan output value, more than 6 billion yuan revenue "grand goal." This violation of the cloud computing industry development Law, blindly seeking large phenomenon deserves attention.

The current policy support way and cloud computing industry intrinsic development law have deviated from

Cloud computing industry has its intrinsic characteristics and development rules, and the policy support mode, which is mainly characterized by land support and fund subsidy, is not entirely suitable for cloud computing industry.

First, economies of scale are a typical feature of cloud computing, and the "ubiquity" of development patterns could lead to overcapacity in the future. A typical feature of the cloud computing industry is the remarkable scale-economy advantage. The application of cloud computing technology makes it possible to efficiently automate management of a large number of server resources, the data center that introduces cloud computing technology can realize the significant reduction of cost only on the larger scale, the cost of power cost and infrastructure maintenance personnel will decrease significantly. and the service providers in the bulk procurement of equipment will be more than small manufacturers up to 20%-30% discount. Therefore, the layout characteristics of cloud computing data center should be the total quantity is small, the monomer scale is big. From the perspective of foreign practice, large cloud computing service providers are in the global layout of several large data centers, mainly distributed in the power enrichment, climate conducive to cooling places, to reflect the scale of economic effects. And all over the country under the support of government departments to build a large number of cloud computing data centers, and energy and climate conditions may not be suitable, if not to guide, it is likely to be due to the lack of application demand after the day to create new overcapacity and equipment idle.

Secondly, to promote the development of the cloud computing industry by means of infrastructure will lead to greater wastage. From all over the current model of cloud computing projects, most of them belong to the infrastructure, that is, the first land, and then buy a large number of new servers, construction costs relatively high. In fact, Google, the first to commercialize its cloud computing business, is using a large number of unused servers to manage and integrate through cloud computing technology and architecture, making these servers affordable and efficient, and embodying the essential features of cost savings in cloud computing. But our country originally has each kind of data center or the computer room approximately 430,000, the quantity approximately occupies the global 13%, but these data center's monomer scale is generally small, the technical and the operation level is also generally low. If new application demonstration projects are based on new, these traditional data center servers can not be used again, causing a lot of waste.

Moreover, the supply side subsidy way violates the cloud computing industry Development original intention. The benefits of cloud computing technology applications are to dramatically reduce the cost of information technology products through virtualization and automated configuration of a large number of servers, enabling users to move from information technology products and build their own informatization systems to leasing from cloud computing data centers. Therefore, cloud computing itself has the commercial prospect, the folk capital to invest this new industry has the bigger enthusiasm, does not need the government to give too many direct subsidy, but needs the government to construct a good industrial development environment. This is different from some other emerging industries with strong externalities. For example, subsidies for new energy industries such as photovoltaic and wind power are based on social benefits such as green and environmental protection. and to save the information technology application of the cost of the cloud computing industry to subsidize too much, there is no need, two may be fuelled, the emergence of industrial bubbles.

Adjust policy support way, promote the healthy and steady development of cloud computing industry

For cloud computing, a strategic emerging industry that is likely to be an important driving force for the future economy, it should be based on a careful study of its technical and economic characteristics, and carry out reasonable strategic layout and proper co-ordination according to its own development rules.

First, accelerate the development of cloud computing industry environment. The substantial development of cloud computing applications depends on market demand and commercial supply to promote together. Therefore, it is more important to build a market environment suitable for the development of cloud computing industry. The first is to solve the commercial level of "cloud security" problem. We should draw on the experience of foreign countries, formulate corresponding laws and regulations on cloud computing security, define the responsibilities and obligations of "cloud service" providers and users in legal form, and stipulate the consequences of "cloud operators" for leaking user data. At the same time, auditing standards and systems should be set up, and the "cloud service" providers should be given a comprehensive assessment of security as the main content, so as to improve the transparency and reliability of the internal operation of service providers. The second is to solve the bottleneck of network bandwidth. The network is the application of cloud computing must "expressway", China's Internet bandwidth is still difficult to meet the development needs of cloud computing, it is advisable to advance the "broadband popularization Speed project." Again, the cloud computing standards should be addressed. No standard will affect the interconnection between multiple "clouds", some domestic leading enterprises have begun to participate in the development of international standards, this should be supported, and should be synchronized to explore the establishment of cloud computing national standard system.

Second, to co-ordinate the strategic layout of large-scale data centers. In the market economy country, the enterprise constructs the cloud Computing data Center Naturally will choose the electricity cost low, the convenient cooling address because of the cost consideration, but our country local government generally does not have the local jurisdiction outside to invest constructs the data center, therefore relies on the local government to promote the cloud computing data center construction to have the difficulty In this respect, the central government should play an integrated planning function, for energy scarcity, the climate is not suitable for provinces and cities, should try to avoid the approval of large-scale data center construction, to help different provinces and cities to coordinate cooperation, the use of their own technology or geographical advantages of complementary development.

Third, the cloud computing project can not only infrastructure thinking, but also should be technological transformation thinking. At present, the cloud computing industry is still in the stage of development in our country, it can completely transform the existing data center and a large number of servers, integrate the existing idle server resources, through the establishment of virtual data center or the nearest merging, Explore how to use virtualization technology and cloud Platform management software to improve the efficiency of these servers.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)