I attended the Cloud Computing China Congress in Beijing yesterday as a speaker and panelist. It’s a one-day event designed for senior IT and business executives who evaluate and make purchasing decisions in the areas of on-demand infrastructure and software services.
There were 600+ attendances and the majority of them have a background in computer sciences. Speakers shared their perspectives and experiences with Cloud Computing and vendors talked about their products. In general, China is in the “how to use Cloud” phase with quite a number of Cloud projects going on. Forrester ‘s Asia business survey in Oct 2011 showed that 20% of business have deployed Cloud, 46% are planning deployment and 33% have no plans. The SaaS (Software as a Service) market shows the most potential.
Microsoft, IBM, Oracle are bigger players in the Chinese market. One Microsoft project presently helps Chengdu city to track pork management from when the pigs are raised to when they are butchered and distributed. Since the Chinese are very cautious about the quality of the food they are consuming, the project is one of many growing efforts that the government is working on to help improve the quality of pork.
The following insights were shared:
- A good strategy should make sure Cloud computing is in alignment with the core business model and has a competitive advantage. A business should not use Cloud just because it’s a trend
- Understanding of the market demand could lead to business success. When demand is in place, technology will follow.
- The role and value of the Cloud broker
- Challenge big data from health industry, marketing promotion and social media.
- Internet of cars (Telematics) evolution will change driver and traffic management; for example, using big data to conduct emotional analysis and driver care, car maintenance and road/bridge maintenance. The insurance industry will be impacted.
- Cloud integration needs to be considered and planned.
It was wonderful to spend time with a group of people so eager to learn.
