According to IDC, China’s public cloud service will be a one-billion RMB market by 2016. So who is taking a bite of the pie so far?
Predictably, the Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent-Xiaomi squad have been quick to enter with heavily funded projects, but it’s still a diverse market as players edge their way in through partnerships and business model innovation.
As the market for connected devices booms in China, a number of cloud services are vying to put down roots in what is shaping up to be a vibrant playground for mobile, IoT, online payments and big data.
We’ve put together a list of some of the most prominent cloud services in China, both local and global;
BATX Players
Baidu Yun (or Baidu Cloud) – Baidu Yun cloud storage service offers 2 TB of permanently free cloud storage.
Aliyun – Alibaba announced last week that it will invest an additional $1 billion USD into cloud computing arm Aliyun to beef up its global presence.
Tencent Cloud – Tencent Cloud, famous for offering 10 TM cloud storage, partnered with IBM last year to offer services aimed at enterprise customers in China.
Kingsoft Cloud – Lei Jun, Kingsoft executive director as well as Xiaomi CEO announced last year that Kingsoft would invest more than $1 billion USD in cloud service. As part of its announcement, Kingsoft Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the software powerhouse Kingsoft corporation received investment from Xiaomi and its parent company in this April.
Individual players
Upyun – Last October, cloud service provider Upyun closed series A financing and went through the Management Buy-Out (MBO) last October.
Qiniu – Qiniu, a cloud service provider founded by previous researchers at Kingsoft and Shanda announced series C funding for overseas expansion last August.
UCloud – In April, UCloud, cloud service provider founded by former Tencent execs, landed Series C funding for global data center construction.
ChinaNetCloud – This week, ChinaNetCloud announced a $9 million USD A series led by Juren Capital. The company currently serves 300 Chinese and international companies on the mainland including Nokia, Dinning, ASOS, Xiaoshuoyi, ThePaper.com and Wandoujia.
Foreign players
Amazon AWS – Amazon Web Service (AWS) announced that it teamed up with the Shanghai municipality to build DreamT Accelerator, supporting the program with its cloud service and technical services.
Microsoft Azure – Microsoft launched a new entity, Microsoft Asia-Pacific Technology Company Ltd. with the cloud as a main priority. Early 2014, the company announced that Azure and Office 365 would be available to all China customers.
