9th March 2011
The business hub of Chongqing, voted China’s happiest city by the Xinhua News Agency, will latch onto the positive vibes surrounding the cloud computing industry by building a huge cloud computing ‘special zone’ in the city’s Liangjiang New Area district.
Plans for the computing hub, released by Asian telecoms leader Pacnet last week, further display China’s intent to become a leading innovator of global cloud computing provision, and follow hot on the heels of last month’s news that IBM plan to fund a cloud computing data centre “the size of a city” within the Heibei province of China’s north-eastern district, Langfang.
According to the Pacnet report, the special zone is expected to be around 10km-squared in size, with over 3km-squared designated specifically for the building of large-scale data centres.
Building will commence within the year and be undertaken in three phases, with the $US30 million data centres a priority. Hong Kong-based Pacnet will facilitate the development, following a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed alongside the Chongqing government.
As part of the deal, the telecoms company will also provide cloud computing services to the data centers with at least 1,500 racks, as well as international submarine cable capacity that will be connected through partners to the Chongqing Cloud Computing Special Zone. The total cost of the build is stated to be around $US200 million.
Huang Qifan, mayor of Chongqing Government, was overjoyed with the deal:
"This strategic cooperation with Pacnet supports the goal of Chongqing to be at the forefront of the cloud computing industry in China. We will leverage Pacnet's global capabilities to attract multinational companies to Chongqing and achieve our goal to become China's major information technology hub, to further accelerate the economic growth in Chongqing."
At present, government IT spending in China is fairly modest, with the $112 billion budget set aside for 2011 roughly one-fifth of that being spent in the US over the same period. However, like many other national governments, the concept and benefits of cloud computing has caught the imagination of the state, and with the scale of resources at the government’s disposal, it is thought the Asian super-power has the potential capacity to become a global leader for IT in the very near future.
And with organisations such as IBM flocking to build city-sized data centres on Chinese land, this suggestion could well come to fruition sooner rather than later. If it does, the happy feeling being experienced in Chongqing could yet become infectious.
