Cloud computing: Making computers revolve around people

I believe you like clouds too, it is a distant view of the visible, near-view boundless, diverse, elegant and uncertain; sometimes, such as cotton, sometimes blew, or light or thick, or volume or Shu, free and easy, floating in the sky, gathering and changing, causing a lot of human reverie ...

Looking back at the history of science and technology, yesterday, was the period of industrial revolution, water, electricity, transportation, communication has achieved socialization, intensification and specialization, to become the public infrastructure of society; Today, we are in the post-industrial revolution, cloud computing is making it and information services socially, intensively and professionally, Making information Services a public infrastructure for society; Tomorrow, we will use information and information technology to accurately control the material and energy, in order to improve resource utilization and productivity levels, the rise of the Internet of Things is the most typical evidence, in which smart grid and intelligent transportation is the most representative, cloud computing becomes the cornerstone of the Internet of things.

Then look at the development of the IT industry, from the last century of the 60 's mainframe, the 70 's small machine, the 80 's PC and LAN, to the 90 desktop Internet, and now the mobile Internet, all this change tells us that computing facilities and environment has been from the computer-centric to network-centric, to people-centered; Software engineering has long been a machine oriented, language-oriented and middleware-oriented form of mainframe-oriented, to the demand-oriented, service-oriented, network-based form, the real implementation of the software as a service; in human-computer interaction, the first mainly keyboard interaction, the invention of the 1964 mouse, Changed the way of human-computer interaction, so that computers are popular, for this reason, the inventor of the mouse won the computer industry's highest award-Turing Award. Now, the main way of interaction has evolved into touch, voice and gesture, which have been transferred from person to computer, to computer around people, interaction, sharing, swarm intelligence and so on are far beyond the scope of the previous Turing machine, this is the ubiquitous calculation.

Whether from the change of computing environment and facilities, the development of software engineering or the change of the way of interaction, all this tells us that mankind has entered a new era-the era of cloud computing.

Sharing will become a trend

By the end of 2009, China's 35 national Software Park Enterprises reached more than 20,000, employs more than 1.3 million people, accounting for half of the national software workers, sales revenue of 767.7 billion yuan, accounting for China's total software industry 60%. So what changes will cloud computing bring to the software park?

As we all know, Software Park is often a city's power consumption, a hundreds of enterprises, thousands of employees of the software park, a variety of hardware and software resources to repeat the investment construction, the monthly cost of electricity nearly 2.5 million yuan, and resource utilization is very low. If the enterprise of the software park can share the same cloud computing platform, including hardware platform, development tools, test environment and running platform, will gradually build green Software Park, to carry on the software namely service, platform namely service, even infrastructure namely service work. For example, with the software enterprise development process, software fragmentation, modularization, and the development process of collaborative collaboration, it is expected to achieve software Park software products in the flexible reorganization, reuse, to "Software as the service" of the Cloud Road.

In the long run, rollout's line of color of the software park will be turbulent, differentiated and reorganized, and gradually form a socialized, intensive and professional service, evolving into a cloud computing center, providing more and more powerful computing, storage and interactive services for different fields.

Expanding applications is fundamental

The traditional telecommunications industry to provide voice communication mainly. With the popularization of data communication, the rapid development of Internet and web network, people's communication between the quality requirements, which led to a variety of text, voice, video and other, more direct, more personalized needs, therefore, the entanglement of traditional telecom operators, in the final analysis is the new technology brought about by the promotion of market demand , is caused by the refinement of demand.

Application of the king, the content of the king caused by the needs of the king, so that we have to provide services to cut into. Information Services, content services, cause the application software is the idea of service, because the application software is the service, it causes the development platform that supports the application software is also the service, because the development platform is the service, only then causes the infrastructure which supports the development platform to operate is also the service, the traditional equipment manufacturer, then has the telecommunication operator, The industry chain of value-added service providers has been inverted in the future.

So, to do not struggle, how to find a way out? First, the telecom industry pyramid hierarchy structure to the flat structure of the transformation, integration of resources, flexible configuration; Secondly, we should give full play to the advantage of the information infrastructure, obtain the basic information from the public, excavate the demand, have a flexible and deep service. The third is to adapt the information namely service, software namely service, The platform is the service and the infrastructure namely the service change, expands the application, cooperates altogether wins.

A process of long-term evolution

2010, the Ministry of Industry and Information technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and other joint identified in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Wuxi, five cities in the first to carry out cloud computing services innovation and development pilot demonstration. Beijing's Xiangyun plan, Shanghai's cloud plan, Wuxi's Internet of things and cloud computing base, have begun a pragmatic push, in the country has played a leading, exemplary role.

Based on the Internet cloud computing, nodes can be large and small, distance is no longer important, so on the basis of the city pilot, I personally think, more should be strengthened industry and field application demonstration. Cloud computing practice, to more pragmatic, from the industry and the field, from the people to get the benefits, from the solution to the people's livelihood, not the size of the cluster server clusters. Cloud computing itself is a green calculation, not more than the size, equipment, compared to the plant, do not make cloud computing into a second real estate.

With the pilot pushed away, the cloud computing practice may also consider the entire Chinese IT industry strategic layout. As you know, power transmission is more expensive, and broadband transmission consumes less money. China Unicom Institute of Optical fiber transmission and power transmission of the cost and energy consumption has done a comparative analysis, fiber transmission hundred kilometers construction cost of 2.1 million yuan, and power transmission up to 240 million yuan, the latter is 1000 times the former The optical fiber transmission hundred kilometers power loss is 5.2 kwh, the electric energy transmission is 25-kilowatt, the latter is nearly 5 times times the former. It is clear that large-scale mega-data centers can be built at cryogenic locations near power plants, the use of broadband communication network to the east and South China transmission of data to replace a large number of coal and electricity to the east and South China, to change the "power Network to transport electricity" to the "telecommunications network to transport data" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, improve the ecological environment, while, It can also promote energy saving and emission reduction and realize green calculation.

Cloud computing practice does not have ready-made mature mode for reference, and there are regional and cultural differences, will be a long-term evolution of the process. But I believe that, in the national relevant ministries of cloud computing model pilot policy driven by the production, learning, research, with the joint efforts of colleagues, cloud computing technology innovation and application of the road will be more and more broad.

(the author is academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, chairman of China Artificial Intelligence society; This article mainly comes from the author's keynote speech at the Third China Cloud computing conference. ）