I am not the right person to comment on this from the tech point of view, but still I felt it’s truly exciting after read the post about Amazon’s move to Singapore which is written by my friend Mohan Belani of E27. You can read Amazon’s official announcement here.
Interesting enough, as one of the organizers of GTUG (Google Technology User Group) Shanghai, I’ve been thinking of having someone talking about Cloud Computing in the next event. (The best candidate based in Shanghai is ChinaNetCloud).
1. Are we waiting for Amazon web services coming to China in the second half of 2010? If you search for “云计算” (which is Cloud Computing in Chinese), you can find loads of buzz from Chinese industry and it seems that all the Chinese star companies are seriously considering it as part of company strategy. Baidu is a cool company, but its Box Computing concept is a bit confusing.
Although I found the nice diagram above clearly pointing out 21ViaNet (China), Inc. the leading data center service provider’s thoughts on its own cloud computing service, called CloudEx. Obviously, 21ViaNet is positioning its CloudEx as the competitor of Amazon web service. Still, for most of the middle/small companies, Cloud Computing is still “somewhere in the Cloud” in China, i.e. they don’t know how they can access the cloud computer and how they can benefit from it, and of course we are missing good cloud service too.
2. Every time when friends ask me for my views on Singapore’s web industry. Always, the Singapore’s government is one of the keywords in my answer. It was a great pleasure to meet some officials from Singapore government when I was there for UnConference 2009 organized by E27, and I was also quite impressed by the conversation with them. They understand the trend and more importantly they are not only good thinkers but also the users and practitioners. Sadly, I have not met one from Chinese government who is able to talk about virtual world, microblogging, amazon web service etc, but officials in Singapore, they do. Mohan said they have been discussing with Amazon since Nov, 2008, and their effort is paid-off. With the deployment of Amazon web service, Singapore will have the advantage to be the first entry for western service moving to Asia too.
If you think Amazon web service into Singapore is only a technology achievement, you are wrong. It is not only about the cloud infrastructure, it could speed up the building of a healthy ecosystem for Singapore IT industry, as Mohan commented:
The primary beneficiaries for these will be the web technology startup entrepreneurs.
seems still to be some paranoia in singapore about true internet freedom .. just one example, try to get data on a prepaid sim card, you cannot. you need another sim card, and that one won't make calls .. so two phones …both china and india are not that paranoid ..of course, there is censorship too, but i think that is common knowledge ..wonder what constraints they will put on amazon ..
interesting point, Gregory.So what if Amazon came to China, or it never will?
Am I right in thinking cloud computing has been slower to catch on in Asia than in America, and if so, why do you think that is the case?
@China Law: Yes you are right. A few reasons there.(1) It ain't that cheap for rapid prototyping and for very early stage web startups to have their stuff on the web.(2) The main cloud infrastructure is currently based in US. Though the latency issues aren't that bad, it's still noticeable. Having your site there may not be the best idea, if your primary users are in Asia. That's why the Asia infrastructure is so important as it'll eradicate that problem.(3) I think there's still a slight risk aversion towards having your data in the cloud. That will take time to go away due to cultural issues and old habits. But once you have enough decent case studies for Asia, you'll see more web companies migrating to the cloud. The benefits far outweigh the pitfalls.
Amazon web service has been actively using AWS for more than a year. Now, amazon is significantly expanding the set of applications that it is migrating from its existing technology infrastructure onto AWS. Netflix members' movie lists, website search, movie transcoding, recommendation system and more will all be powered by AWS, representing many of the most critical pieces of theamazon web service infrastructure.
Beauteous white roses are blooming peacefully in the wizard's secret garden. Someone could hear the voice of blooming whilst someone might see the sequel of fading. http://www.the-various.com/
Just as the post reads, there are many good cloud computing services in America, but almost none in Asia. The Asians still don't even know how they can benefit from it. But I think it won't stay like this for long with services like CloudEx appearing.
Just as the post reads, there are many good cloud computing services in America, but almost none in Asia. The Asians still don't even know how they can benefit from it. But I think it won't stay like this for long with services like CloudEx appearing.