A massive new agreement that will enable a variety of cloud services throughout China has been announced by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and several Chinese local and regional government bodies. The partnership is being established to develop and promote cloud infrastructure and services throughout the country.
AWS is working with Cloud Valley, a giant technology campus in the suburbs of Beijing, as well as the Beijing Municipal Government and Ningxia Autonomous Region Government. All parties have signed a memorandum of understanding to set up cloud infrastructure and services in the "shop ahead and the factory behind" model.
That means that Beijing will act as the "front shop" for providing services with Zhongwei, located in Ningxia, providing infrastructure and back-end services. When combined, the new partnership will provide cloud services and technologies for customers throughout China.
The cooperative project is designed to bring the experience, brand and marketing powers of AWS to China along with the inherent advantages of setting up back-end infrastructure in Ningxia. These include low energy costs as well as available land and economical construction conditions. Meanwhile, the front shop will focus on sales, marketing, application development and providing high quality services with low-delay production values.
The "front shop and back factory" model ensures that the face of the project is located in a metropolitan area while the back-end and data center are placed in remote locations. AWS has been focusing on this model in the U.S., setting up a small front-facing data center in San Francisco and a larger facility in Oregon offering low operation costs and less delays than facilities located in Silicon Valley.
"As the important supporting platform of mobile internet, big data and intelligent application, the construction of a service platform for cloud computing can promote IT innovation and the trend of business startup in China," said Tian Suning, founder of Cloud Valley & president of China Broadband Capital. "Besides, it is also an important force to drive the transformation from consumption internet to industrial internet."
Suning added that making investments in the industrial computing model encourages local innovation and fosters advanced development of cloud computing technologies and services. Suning's Cloud Valley industrial base is the main cloud computing hub in China and has been instrumental in bringing cloud services to the country. The organization has also brought China Telecom, China Unicom and other operators on board, and these companies have promised to make a strategic investment to upgrade Zhongwei, Ningxia to a backbone network node in support of the project. This will pave the way for AWS to offer reliable cloud services based on the Ningxia back-end moving forward.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
