On June 24, 2011, Asia Cloud Forum and its sister publication Computerworld Hong Kong hosted the 2011 Cloud Technologies Forum, where CIOs, research analysts and industry players discussed the different facets of cloud computing in Asia.
In particular, both KPMG and Forrester Research indicated the obvious rise in awareness and adoption of cloud computing in China.
Announced in March, the Chinese government's 12th Five-Year Plan paid specific attention to the use of technology, which was seen as a "strategic emerging industry." According to James Mckeogh, senior manager at KPMG Hong Kong, the Plan is closely tied to the cloud computing agenda, which is aimed at improving energy efficiency.
To help coordinate the efforts of various governments, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) last month inaugurated the Professional Committee on Cloud Computing. The idea was to provide policy consulting and decision-making support for various governments and enterprises to drive cloud computing initiatives.
Booming investments
The Chinese government is making fierce investments in cloud initiatives, with an investment of 1.1 trillion yuan ($154.5 billion) planned for the development of key cloud computing hubs, said Mckeogh.
Apart from the five cloud hubs already set up in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Wuxi, the government plans to build 20 more cloud computing centers in the country, with over 10 million sq ft of cloud data center currently in construction, said Bryan Wang (pictured above), VP & principal analyst at Forrester Research.
"We estimate that the direct current cloud infrastructure investments made by different provinces and cities in China have already exceeded 50 billion yuan ($8 billion)." Wang added that he expects further "sizeable announcements to be made in the coming months."
Figure 1 below helps visualize the scale of cloud investments in China. While the provinces in light blue indicate large scale cloud projects in place, provinces in green such as Shandong and Hubei are working with industry players to form Cloud Alliances.
Figure 1. Booming cloud investment in China
Booming cloud investment in China (Source: Forrester Research June 2011)
Crowded market
In China, the cloud business operates on a public-private partnership model. This means multinational (MNC) cloud service providers have to either focus on MNC end users, or work with local partners to do businesses. "This is the case with EMC, which works with China Telecom in offering its cloud storage services. Without having a license, EMC cannot build data centers in China," Wang said.
China's cloud computing market is crowded with MNC and local players. Even with the presence of big brands such as Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, IBM, EMC, Cisco and Brocade, Wang sees local players of Software-as-a-Service, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) being more active in the Chinese market.
For example, on the SaaS front, Sina, 263 and Netease offer email solutions, while Salesforce.com, SAP ByD, 800App and Kingdee providing CRM or ERP solutions. On the IaaS front, while China Mobile and China Telecom are the dominant telcos, GDS and 21ViaNet offer internet data center services. As for PaaS, Amazon Beanstalk, Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure provide corporate applications while Alibaba provides e-commerce platforms.
Such a crowded cloud computing market in China has led to a significant reduction in public cloud service prices.
"Take SaaS CRM as an example, the competitive SaaS market has driven down the service pricing, and we expect a certain level of market consolidation in the next two years," said Wang. "We have even seen some local players selling standard or basic CRM solutions at the price of 200 yuan (US$31) per user per year. But does this make any business sense?"
In contrast, the SaaS email market is more stabilized, as the hosted email market is more matured. As for cloud storage, a form of IaaS, pricing will tend to become stable, as service providers and large players add their footprints in different locations to increase their national coverage, Wang said.