Internet Initiative Japan Rolls Out Cloud Service in China

With the demand for cloud services in China expected to be high, one of Japan’s leading Internet access and network solutions providers has released a new cloud service that offers enterprise customers a choice of virtual or dedicated servers.

Following the release of a successful pilot program since last September, Internet Initiative Japan (News - Alert) Inc. has rolled out IIJ GIO CHINA Service through IIJ Global’s Shanghai subsidiary, IIJ Global Solutions China Inc.

Company officials said that the new virtual server option allows customers to select the CPU, RAM (News - Alert) size, disk size and OS for about $56 per month.

The equipment for this service is located in the company’s Shanghai data center, and the service provides customer support in Chinese, Japanese and English. The Internet infrastructure for this service is provided by China’s two largest telecommunications carriers, China Telecom (News - Alert), and China Unicom, both headquartered in Beijing, providing low-latency communications.

“In the past, communications that straddle the networks of both these carriers experienced latency and interruptions (the North-South problem in telecommunications),” Internet Initiative Japan said in a company statement. “With this service, IIJ is able to automatically find the fastest connection for the customer. This is the first cloud service in the world to provide this method of connectivity.”

With over 800 customers, IIJ has been operating the IIJ GIO Service in Japan since 2009 and has been working on the development of cloud services since March 2012.

“Using IIJ’s expertise in operating cloud services in Japan, we will provide the same level of quality and flexibility in the China as we do in Japan,” according to the statement.

China currently accounts for around three percent of the global cloud computing market share, estimated to be around $90 billion in 2011 alone. The country’s annual growth rate is also impressive, according to analyst firm Gartner (News - Alert),  and puts China at around 40 percent growth per annum.

SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for Internet Initiative Japan on June 22, 2012 at $9.83. As of October 2012, Internet Initiative Japan had returned 26.42 percent as of the price of $12.42.