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Guest Post by Kelly Zhang – Corporate Communications at Seagate.
Storage hardware makers and solution providers continue to see new opportunities emerging from China’s fast-growing cloud-computing market.
By 2020, over 60 percent of the storage capacity shipped will be in the cloud, according to Seagate market-research forecasts. China accounts for 13 percent of global cloud capacity; cloud computing is a key area of tech investment for the government.
Market researcher Gartner conducted a recent survey of large enterprises in eight countries and found that 58 percent of Chinese respondents have invested in cloud computing or plan to invest in it—a figure that’s higher than the global average of 50 percent.
Global enterprise spending on the cloud is expected to rise to $109 billion this year, up from $91 billion last year, according to Gartner. By 2016, enterprise cloud spending will reach an estimated $207 billion.
Strategic Push
“The Chinese government has been pushing cloud computing aggressively and has listed it as one of the top strategic focuses in IT development in the next few years,” wrote Gartner analyst Jimmie Chang in a 2011 report on China’s adoption of storage technologies and cloud computing. “Not only as a policy maker, but also as a large buyer, the Chinese government has a strong influence in the IT industry, and it’s using this influence to push the industry toward the cloud.”
Seagate recently showcased its full product portfolio at the 4th China Cloud Computing Conference (CCCC) in Beijing, the largest of its type in China. More than 8,000 people attended the event; among the exhibitors there were Microsoft, IBM, Intel, VMware, Baidu, China Mobile, and Huawei.
The conference was organized by the Chinese Institute of Electronics. Wes Perdue, Seagate’s director of Cloud Storage Strategy, discussed the company’s storage solutions and how those products can be incorporated into servers and other cloud-computing applications.
Pick Your Cloud
“The overall cloud market consists of cloud computing, cloud storage and personal clouds,” Perdue explained. “Each ‘cloud’ represents a unique opportunity for Seagate in terms of the products and solutions we provide, the partners we work with, and the customers we serve.”
Andrew Yang, country Manager for Seagate China, added that Chinese enterprises are surprisingly active in adopting new storage technologies compared with their western counterparts. “They are likely to be pioneers in adopting storage tiering, including solid-state drives and cloud computing,” he said.
Yang said Seagate’s broad portfolio of enterprise and branded-retail solutions enable partners to build the cloud, small- and medium-sized businesses to adopt the cloud, and consumers to create their own clouds and access their content on the go.
“With more than 10 million small- and medium-sized enterprises across the nation, there are significant opportunities,” he said.
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