BroadGroup has released a new report whose findings reveal that China is undergoing a massive cloud growth program
IT research group BroadGroup announced on Thursday it has released a new report whose findings reveal that China is undergoing a massive cloud growth program that will result in an investment of $370 billion to more than double data center capacity by 2016.
The report, titled “China Cloud, Challenges and Opportunities in China’s Cloud Datacenter Deployment”, describes the strategy to depend on foreign technology suppliers and generate long term economic growth for its population of 1.3 billion people.
The report is certainly interesting in that it is the first comprehensive analysis to date of China’s Cloud strategy and data center deployment.
In what is the Chinese government’s 12th 5-year plan, China will invest significantly in developing new cloud platforms, software and applications supported by cloud data center deployment.
The initiative first began with 5 cloud cities and has now worked its way to at least 15 provinces with significantly funded projects.
The report outlines a total of 109 projects, most of which include building new cloud data centers.
At the nexus of the project’s investment is the North of China, which outlines province by province plans. The top five provinces comprise of more than 88 percent of the total investment.
The report breaks down the main players with SWOT analysis across the biggest data center player segments including carrier neutral, data centers, and the three giants China Mobile, China Unicom and China Mobile.
Cloud cities are detailed in the report and in a regional analysis of Cloud investments, include a taxonomy of the projects taking place in each location.
The report also includes maps of the distribution of Cloud projects by Investment by RMB, by space and by number of projects.
The data center is also hindered by many challenges, with the success of China Cloud projects depending on business models and demand.
The report also details the political, commercial and technical challenges of the data center market relating to bandwidth availability, network access and power supply.
On the other hand, the report points out that there are many opportunities available in the market, but emphasizes that government policy is the only way to take advantage of these opportunities.
Talk back: What do you think about China’s current cloud market? Are you offering cloud hosting services in the China market? Let us know in the comments.
About Justin Lee
Justin Lee has been a staff analyst with theWHIR since 2004. He writes about a range of web hosting and IT-related issues facing the industry on the WHIR website, as well the print version of the WHIR magazine. Follow him on Twitter @Justin_theWHIR.
