The rise of cloud and the opportunity of China

Before attending this year's Boao Forum for Asia, I was invited by the first financial daily to share some knowledge of the development of cloud computing. I focused on the core of cloud computing, clarifying the misunderstanding of the existence of cloud computing, expect us to move towards cloud practice more rational and stable.

After years of accumulation and continuous exploration, cloud computing began to become the mainstream of global information industry development, this is the result of the industry changes. Emerging mobile Internet technologies, rising computing power, and rapid and pervasive digital communications are driving industrial change and creating new business models that reshape the pattern of economic development and commercial competition.

Cloud computing becomes the mainstream consensus

Cloud computing can be the mainstream of it innovation practices due to the following three factors:

First, over the past more than 10 years, the development of technology makes the idea of large scale and centralized computing become reality CPU, the multi-core evolution of GPU and the perfection of virtualization technology, have found an important breakthrough point for the high performance and low power consumption of information system. Greater Internet bandwidth makes real time, multiple, Complex computational applications are possible; the development of mass storage, data mining and artificial intelligence has brought about faster, more accurate and more humanistic Internet services.

Secondly, I say, cloud computing is forced out. With more and more data, software more and more complex, terminals more and more diverse, more and more computing, the server and PC clients can not meet user needs, cloud computing came into being, massive data into new production factors. In the next 5-10 years, the Big Bang will continue. According to statistics, there will be 25 billion networked devices, including smart meters, smart cars, smart buildings, smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, mobile health monitoring devices and traditional PCs by 2015, which will produce 1.6 Zetta Bytes (1021 bytes), This is the current global Cloud Computing Network annual traffic (130 Exa bytes,1018 byte) 12 times times. As a result, industry must rely on cloud computing to develop.

Third, the emergence of new business models, so that individuals and business users see different from the past trends and possibilities. I have pointed out many years ago that "service" will become a trend in the software industry, and this trend is no doubt more obvious now. Software is no longer just a packaged (or pre-installed) good "commodity", but it can be obtained in a variety of forms, such as online services, on-demand rentals, and free versions of ads. In addition, Peer-to-peer resource sharing, video on demand, information search, LBS (location-based services), these are not easy to implement the traditional software functions, must rely on the "cloud" on the large-scale computing resources.

With large-scale data centers, cloud computing will provide unlimited computing resources, storage capacity and processing capacity, can help solve the global health, environment, energy, scientific research and many other areas of major challenges, but also bring the technical framework, business model and industrial structure of a major change. The multidimensional innovation based on "cloud" will be an important force to promote the health and sustainable development of the world.

Cloud computing as a new generation of information technology, IoT, the nerve center of mobile Internet, some developed countries and multinational companies have invested heavily in the active deployment of cloud computing infrastructure, operating systems, application platforms, as well as the development of a large number of applications and services. The Chinese Government now attaches great importance to cloud computing, which is very visionary. In my opinion, in the process of promoting cloud computing, we must grasp the core features, clarify the concept and avoid misunderstanding.

Three features of cloud computing

First, cloud computing is to simplify. That is, the complex technology, architecture, platform "internal" in the cloud, more from the end user perspective of the design, development and deployment of convenient, friendly, user-friendly application and cloud experience to the end user. Complexity has been a hindrance to it innovation, and the fundamental purpose of cloud computing is to simplify, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the user experience.

Second, the core of cloud computing is data, software and services, not just hardware and data centers, but cloud computing cannot be equated with building data centers. Now when it comes to "cloud", people start planning land use, building cloud computing technology parks, and then announcing that they will be equipped with a number of computing, storage and networking hardware devices. We must be soberly aware that cloud computing must be market-driven, application-oriented, software as a tool, enterprises as the main body, to achieve "infrastructure as a service", "Platform as a service", "Software as a service" and "data as a service."

Third, the future will not be realized overnight. The popularity of cloud computing is also gradual, rather than overnight, its development must follow the development of the industry itself. "Cloud" technology is now precisely in such a state: it is indeed a new architecture, the overall development of the information industry a broad direction. However, because of the excessive rendering and speculation, so that the public feel a blink of an earthquake-like change, in fact, not so. Cloud computing is a huge industrial chain that needs to be built and perfected over a long period of time.

The journey towards the cloud

From the global perspective, 2011 is the cloud computing industry "steady" development of the year. In the United States, for example, the United States "cloud" development is much faster than China, the level of virtualization and "cloud" has been high in both government public services, small and medium-sized enterprises and large businesses, and over the past few years Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and many new companies (such as Dropbox and Zynga) have been "cloud "has launched a lot of revolutionary products and services, and gradually get the user's approval." But there is no denying that these are rare in China.

It is particularly noteworthy that the U.S. federal Cloud Computing strategy, published in early February 2011, marks the United States has raised cloud computing to the height of its national strategy. In the white paper, the U.S. federal government will clearly measure the benefits, considerations and selection of cloud computing, provide decision frameworks and application cases, instruct departments to migrate to the cloud platform, further strengthen the deployment of cloud computing facilities, develop a federal action plan, define the responsibilities of relevant departments, and promote the deployment of cloud computing. This means that over the past 12 months, the federal government has spent 20 billion dollars on the development of cloud computing applications, accounting for 1/4 of the total US federal government spending on it.

The Chinese government and companies also have a deeper understanding of the cloud. In China, many IT companies publish "cloud" strategy, the introduction of "cloud" products, operators also began to deploy based on "cloud" applications. For China's IT industry, the biggest opportunity for cloud computing is to develop a social network platform that is above the cloud and end, and to launch diversified applications covering search, advertising, social and business. In particular, the application platform based on cloud computing has strong regional and local characteristics, and it is believed that Chinese enterprises have great opportunities in this field.

Cloud practice also presents new opportunities for individuals in the ICT industry. Because cloud computing is different from the traditional outsourcing model, the efficiency gains from the cloud are reflected not only in it innovation, but also in recruiting more sales, finance, production and marketing personnel. In March this year, a recent study by IDC showed that The new revenue generated by cloud computing's IT innovations will reach $1.1 trillion trillion in 2015, and will create nearly 14 million new jobs around the world, which will create 6.8 million jobs in China and India, mainly thanks to the large number of Chinese and Indian government infrastructure projects that will spur investment in private it cloud services, and second, because compared with developed regions, emerging The market's It cloud service spending is facing less traditional resistance.

Challenges of cloud practice in China

As mentioned before, the popularization of Chinese cloud practice is a gradual process, there are four challenges we must face.

The first is to solve the "who to build the cloud infrastructure" problem-with the pace of reform and opening up, the Chinese enterprises in recent years, the global competitiveness has been greatly improved, but overall, the vast majority of Chinese enterprises are still lack of sufficient resources and strength to build a large cloud computing platform. This is because the cloud computing infrastructure needs huge capital investment, long time resources deployment and continuous renewal maintenance, the domestic small and medium-sized enterprises generally do not have such resources, strength and strategy. Large state-owned enterprises generally lack the flexible mechanism and the impetus of innovation.

The second is how to ensure the reliability and security of the cloud computing platform. Users do not have to know where their data is stored in the server, but it is very concerned about whether these "digital assets" will not be lost, damaged or even stolen, so the cloud service providers themselves must have a long-term operational strength, as well as the protection of user privacy and confidential information technology and reputation, which may make the "cloud" Highly reliable.

The third is how to realize the scalability of cloud platform, the uniformity of data format and standard, the portability of information and application. For example, is it necessary for an enterprise that uses a cloud service to transfer all of its data and software to a platform of B for a lengthy process of transition and migration? If so, it is bound to greatly weaken the value of cloud computing itself.

The four is the challenge of cloud infrastructure deployment. A large data center needs millions of high-performance servers, this puts a high demand on the location of such large data centers-at least in areas where natural disasters occur with less chance and with stable and reliable power supply, and should be implemented throughout the design and operation of data centers, "Green it "Philosophy and solutions. Because energy supplies and refrigeration account for more than 50% of data center operating costs.

In response to these challenges, my recommendations are:

First, the establishment of government and enterprises to join together, follow the market-oriented rules of operation of the "Cloud Computing Fund" to support and help the domestic cloud computing industry to form as soon as possible. It is the government's responsibility to invest, assessment and incentives, such as the provision of seed funds, the formulation of a number of clear policy tilt and support measures (such as tax-level concessions) to attract domestic and foreign enterprises to invest and participate in the Chinese cloud industry, but do not have to the fund and the resulting industry do too much intervention-that is to say, The investment of Cloud computing fund should be open, internationalized, market operation.

The Government should encourage scientific research units and domestic enterprises to actively participate in the development of international cloud computing standards (especially data standards) and norms, and seek the leading position of international technical standards in this field. However, while striving for dominance, it is important to realize that openness and cooperation are of paramount importance. So in the process of cloud computing standard research and development, should ensure that the data exchange is international compatible, cross manufacturer, Cross-platform, so as to ensure that China does not become the cloud era of information islands.

Third, the development of cloud computing should respect the market law, rational and steady forward development. The best way for governments to support cloud computing is to move government functions to the cloud platform. Of course, the Government must guide the planning and construction of cloud computing, giving priority to energy saving and emission reduction, and to renewable clean energy (like wind, hydro, solar) and state-of-the-art green IT technology. This is like building a real "information superhighway", the government and large enterprises are responsible for the construction of the physical platform and "driving rules" of the development, while the repaired highway on what car, pull what material by small and medium-sized enterprises in accordance with market demand decision.

To support and promote international cooperation in the field of cloud computing and encourage academic institutions and enterprises at home and abroad to reach strategic partnerships and share resources and business opportunities. While attempting to intervene and even dominate international cloud computing standards, enterprises (especially small and medium-sized enterprises) should be allowed to develop competitive cloud applications and services based on existing, mature international cloud computing platforms.

Concluding

Over the past more than 30 years, Microsoft's innovative ecology with its industry peers and partners has enabled us to face up to the new challenges of the era of change and to lead the vision of a future cloud. We will take the accumulation of cloud practice and experience to support China's smooth march towards the cloud.

Major technological changes are always driving the development of human society, cloud computing is such a force. It is hoped that Asia and China, in a changing world, can grasp this trend and contribute to the health and sustainable development of human society.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)