Zhang: Cloud Rise and China opportunity

[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 announcing that they will be equipped with a number of computing, storage and networking hardware devices.

Cloud computing is known as the most anticipated technological revolution in the world, and cloud computing has brought universal attention around the world because it is marked not just by a new technology, but by a change in the industry as a result of technology that will determine the competitiveness of the country.

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, more and more complex software, more and more terminals, more and more computing, the server and PC clients can not meet the needs of users, cloud computing comes into being, and massive data becomes the new production factor. In the next 5-10 years, the Big Bang will continue. According to statistics, there will be 25 billion networked devices by 2015, including smart meters, smart cars, smart buildings, smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, mobile health-monitoring devices and traditional PCs. 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.

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. I think that in the process of promoting the development of cloud computing, we also need to grasp the core features, clear concepts, 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 design, development and deployment, the convenient, friendly, user-friendly application and cloud experience to the end user.

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.

Third, the future will not be realized overnight. "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.

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 degree of virtualization and "cloud" is high, whether it's government public services, small businesses or big businesses, and over the past few years, Microsoft (Weibo), Amazon (Weibo), Apple, Google (Weibo), Facebook and many new companies ( such as Dropbox and Zynga, etc., have launched a number of revolutionary products and services in the cloud, and are gradually recognized by users. But there is no denying that these are rare in China.

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.

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 found 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 globally, with 6.8 million jobs in China and India alone.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)