China will build the world's top cloud computing base in Hebei to help industrial upgrading
China will build a city scale cloud computing and office comprehensive base in Langfang, Hebei Province. The base will include a large data center, which is one of many large projects supporting China's IT spending to continue to maintain double-digit growth.
The entire base will cover an area of 6.2 million square feet (about 580000 square meters), including 646000 square feet (about 60000 square meters) for the initial data center. The project will be jointly constructed by IBM and China Runze Technology Development Co., Ltd.
In terms of scale, the project is comparable to the Pentagon. From the perspective of project renderings, the base has many buildings, which should be office buildings or residential areas. Although China's annual IT expenditure accounts for only 1/5 of that of the United States, the growth momentum is rapid, and the launch of many large-scale projects, including supercomputers and software parks, will certainly win global attention. IDC data shows that China's IT spending in 2010 was 97 billion US dollars, and this year is expected to reach 112 billion US dollars, up 15.6% year on year. The US IT expenditure this year is expected to reach 564 billion US dollars, up only 5.9% year on year.
Dale Sartor, an engineer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under the US Department of Energy, said: "At present, China's IT industry is not very strong, and it needs to rely on suppliers to design data centers for it." Last year, Sartor visited eight data centers in China. Sator predicted that the development of China's data centers will accelerate significantly, especially large cloud computing service centers. Sator said, "Considering the factors such as efficiency and control ability, China's cloud computing has a bright future. Once cloud computing starts to be popular and gets the support of the government, it is more efficient and convenient than the traditional decentralized management model."
The project will use IBM's data design services, IBM said that the rapid development of China's IT industry also promoted IBM's revenue growth. In 2010, IBM's revenue in China increased by 25% year on year.
The data center initially covers an area of 646000 square feet, but can easily expand to 1 million square feet (about 93000 square meters). After the initial 7 data centers are completed, 3 data center buildings may be built on both sides of them in the future.
IBM said that the center is expected to be completed in 2016 and will become one of the largest data centers in the world. China's IT industry will be greatly improved.
