Beijing's ETown looks to be China's largest cloud computing center

The Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area, or ETown, a modern business area in the southeast suburbs of China's capital, aims to become the nation's largest cloud computing research and development center, according to the area's officials.

"To date, the town has attracted a combined investment of up to 20 billion yuan ($3.27 billion) for the cloud computing industry, has gathered 200 leading enterprises in the industry and the investment is on an upward swing," said Liang Sheng, head of the Etown's administrative committee.

Sheng made the comments during the CVW 2014 Business Internet Conference, which the ETown sponsored.

The Beijing ETown Cloud Computing Park has established complete industrial chains, gathered 27 leading enterprises including Baidu and Centrin Data System and generated sales value of 2 billion yuan in 2013.

"The industrial clusters including data processing, software development, platform operation and cloud computing outsourcing services have taken shape," Sheng said.

The ETown, which is home to more than 9,000 enterprises and has an average annual GDP of 3.08 billion yuan, aims to offer policy support to the industry and create synergy for more related sectors.

The nation's first cloud computing server was researched and developed in the park and the area's Centrin Data System build the country's largest data processing network.

The rapid development of the cloud computing sector was partly due to Beijing municipal government's Xiangyun Project, which literally translates as Auspicious Cloud Project.

To date, the project has provided 5 billion yuan and land for firms at a cloud base in the ETown's cloud computing park.

Wang Xuejun, deputy head of the Beijing municipal commission of economy and information technology, said the commission would continue boost the use of cloud computing in environmental protection, transport and healthcare sectors as well as in regulations for the sectors.

The nation's largest cloud computing operation and system construction centers and the largest cloud computing platform are expected to be built in the ETown.

Jin Yadong, chief technology officer of Asia Info, a leading cloud computing firm, said time was pressing for all companies in the sector and there was a critical need to make new products to lead the industry forward.

Gao Wei, an Asia Info senior executive, said that the data asset construction process was a carrier-grade mature product, which ensures data is reliable and verifiable, with full lifecycle and panoramic data governance tools.

Tian Shuonning, president of CBC capital, a top investor in the sector, indicated that the top challenge for exponential growth of cloud computing in the Etown was legislation to secure the sector's sound growth.