Hyperscale and Hyperconverged data centers have great potential in the fast-evolving market over the next few years. As the new engine of the economy, business-scale data centers are delivering their IT infrastructure for the digital age, through cloud-enabled, software-defined data centers in China.
So far, the China market has witnessed the rapid development of Cybersecurity, Sharing Economy, Internet Plus, Internet of Things, Virtual reality, Big Data, Artificial intelligence, P2P, 5G technology … They are all buzz words but have been developing at a speed beyond your imagination to disrupt and redefine the way our business works.
This year, DCD held it’s first-ever China Datacenter Week (China DC Week) along with 8th DCD> Enterprise China in the tallest building in Greater China’s commercial center – Shanghai - under cosmopolitan airs. As the highlight of the regional technology calendar, the 4-day initiative hosted a major conference and expo, multiple business and networking events (e.g. partner events and networking parties), awards (Kick-off), training and data center & solution tours.
“It’s a week-long gathering of infrastructure technology executives coming from across the nation, and foreign technology companies seeking to build or invest in China,” commented Vincent Liew, Managing Director for Asia Pacific, DCD.
To expand on this, “as other market-watchers eye on further growth in the China data center market, China is looking forward to building a cyberspace community of shared destiny - to construct global network infrastructure and promote interconnectivity for further bridging the information gap between different countries,” said Tingo Zhao, CTO from DC-Science which just acquired the assets of IBM’s Smart Building site and facility business in China,“ Focusing on frontier areas such as digital economy, AI, nanotechnology and quantum computing, you may have known that, China is building its digital silk road and driving force on innovation. It will, further, bring companies to re-imagine their business models and accelerate steps toward digital transformation.”
Under Fintech, Sharing economy and the Belt and Road Initiative—China’s digital age is noticeably in full swing
If we look back to June 2014, a research found by the China Internet Network Information Center showed that smart phone Internet connections exceeded traditional PC connections for the first time “as Chinese citizens powered up hand-held devices to stream media, play games, shop and chat”.
Since then, digital revolution is shifting the landscape! With only 21% of iPhone customers using Apple Pay, Alipay, the largest Chinese online payment provider, reports that it has over 350 million users and growing continuously. This is due to the fact that Chinese citizens increasingly rely on mobile technology for everyday transactions. Along with the technological advancements like Fintech, China experiences a shift back towards a more decentralized economy, by making it easier for people to connect, communicate and trade. This boosts the sharing economy in China, which is developing quickly.
As you all know, Didi Chuxing, a Chinese transportation behemoth created by a merger between two rivals in 2015, bought Uber’s China operation in 2016. Subsequently, Cheng Wei, Didi’s co-founder and CEO, and Jean Liu, its president, “now resides over a ride-hailing empire that’s said to be valued at around $50 billion, thanks to a recently raised $5.5 billion funding round”.
Vertical markets in China are born to be wild, and are growing far beyond our imagination. New opportunities awaits EVERYONE to start to build your own empire – and engine here.
“President Xi’s emphasis on digital economy and financial technology suggests huge potential to be unleashed under the Belt and Road Initiative, and is an orchestra baton to fintech firms that want to expand overseas,” said ShengJia, chief executive officer of NCF Group, a payment platform for internet finance.
Government power: Data center containment and control drives cyberspace security and energy efficiency
Rapid economic ascendance especially in data center industry has brought on many challenges, including cyberspace security and energy efficiency. Significant policy adjustments are required in order for China’s growth to be sustainable.
China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) and the newly approved 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) forcefully addresses many issues. Some of the highlights are the services and measures related to environmental challenge (like reducing pollution) and energy efficiency as well as cyberspace security seem to be taken into practice more quickly.
You may know that, China is moving forward with its plans to vet all internet service providers and networking hardware recently. Several laws that would increase its control over cyberspace were enacted such as “the Security Review Measures for Network Products and Services (Trial)” which published on 2 May 2017 by the Cyberspace Administration of China (“CAC”).
These measures are the first implementation rules to be published following the issuance of the People’s Republic of China Cybersecurity Law (the “Cybersecurity Law”) and has taken effect from the same date as the Cybersecurity Law on 1 June 2017.
Last year, China also amended the Energy Conservation Law of the People’s Republic of China (2016 Amendment) in accordance with the Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Amending Six Laws, including the Energy Conservation Law of the People’s Republic of China, at the 21st Session of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National People’s Congress on July 2, 2016.
But we all know that laws and standards/ measures are not implemented at the same rate with the pace of digital transformation. However, although the central government and its organs are superior to other local parties in China. It seems local government parties, especially Beijing and Shanghai, have more voices in cyberspace security and energy efficiency these two years.
This year, under the guidance and support of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, two drafts of municipal local standard, data center operation management and energy conservation surveillance, and data center energy conservation evaluation method, are in review.
BAT to lead the digital transformation for adopting new blended strategies
From June 12 to 15, the first China Datacenter Week (China DC Week) casts its nets to pull in an international crowd to the tallest building in Greater China’s commercial center – Shanghai, bringing together over 1000 industrial players to network and share their experiences in this flourishing market against fierce competition.
“With 8 years working in China, We DCD has witnessed the incredible rise and change in digital with a huge growth in Chinese companies with overseas data center expansion plans, especially Tech giants like BAT” said Nancy Cui, the senior conference producer in DCD China, “This year, we turn our annual event into a week-long gathering to include more content about digital transformation: opening ceremony, DCPro training, data center site tour (Tencent), DCD> Enterprise China in shanghai (conference and expo), CXO leader summit, DCD- Tencnet Partner Event, Invest in Denmark closed-door workshop, Dale Sartor Energy Efficiency workshop and warm liquid cooling rack round table panel, Datacenter Week awards kick off drinks…”
As one of the key partners of China DC Week, alongside with Alibaba and Baidu, Tencent has shared its latest case study – the first CCHP (combined cooling, heat and power) practice in China - in conjunction with the week’s activities. Tencent has adopted advanced solutions to its data center in Shanghai which will be revealed at the site tour during China Datacenter Week.
Besides, this year’s week long program included a heavyweight line-up of international speakers sharing about cooling. In addition to a half-day Energy Efficiency workshop on 14 June, LBNL had their members from the Green Data Center & Open Computing Working Group to do a roundtable discussion on liquid cooling rack on 15 June during DCD>Enterprise China.
Organized by LBNL and representing global hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Intel, Facebook, Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent), the panel discussed a proposed open specification for a liquid cooled rack intended to lower cost and to help the technology gain broader data center adoption. The representatives of the working group onsite, Dale Sartor, P.E., the Staff Scientist and Engineer from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Feng Guo, the Deputy General Secretary from Energy Saving and Emissions Reduction Committee from Chinese Institute of Electronics; Ali Heydari, the Chief Architect from Baidu; Ensoli Li, the Data Center Architect from Tencent; Shuiwang Liu, the Senior Expert of Data Center Infrastructure from Alibaba; Adrian (Yuyang) Xia, the Thermal Architect from Intel, shared their joint efforts on energy efficiency and cost savings and shed light on their best practices especially on cooling, like Ali Cloud’s first immersion cooling server “kylin”.
This year, we invited 30+ thought leaders to give their insight speech ranging from underlying to the upper level, even at the edge. Scott Noteboom, the CEO from LitBit and also former Head of Data Center for Apple, Atsushi Yamanaka, the Steering Committee Member from JDCC, Nicola Hayes, the Managing Director from the European Data Centre Association, Leo Chen, the IDC Senior Architect from Alibaba, Ge Xu, the Deputy General Manager from China Life Insurance Company, Hua Zhu, the Director of Technology Development Center from IDC Platform Department, Wenruo Zhang, the Senior Architect from China Pacific Insurance Company… people from all kinds of industries bring their invaluable insights and experience to the table.
“We heard many discussing about the latest exciting innovations. And our China Datacenter Week Programme is really rich in content. We talked about global data center market, we talked about china. We talked about how machine learning and AI are changing data center operation, how do we advance data center innovation and how do we identify our data center strategy to meet the needs for the digital age with cloud-enables, software-defined data centers in china… You know, china changed a lot, and more startups are going to find their opportunities in this digital transformation. The opportunities here are really great.” said Nancy Cui.
What others have to say about China Datacenter Week 2017
- “DCD is a very good communication platform as it attracts the participation of many parties including product and service providers, clients and research institutions. We can share technical expertise on this platform and promote the development of the whole industry, hence creating a good ecological environment”. - Zhu Hua, Vice Director of IDC, Tencent
- ”This is the best event I have participated in since I joined Alibaba. We can see that the host (DCD) sees the attendee experience as a priority. I also saw containerized data center solutions for the first time”. - Jin Mu, Head of PR, Alibaba Group
- “Thanks to DCD for its outstanding contribution to China’s data center industry over the past 8 years. We believe that DCD will bring more innovative ideas and drivers to the data center industry with their expansion into the field of large-scale infrastructure, from data center to cloud, and from IT infrastructure to digital business infrastructure in China”. - Haifeng Qu, Alibaba
- “Now we live in a big data era, which puts forward new requests to enterprise data centers. Through the DCD platform, we know more about the latest developments of the industry and the requirements of our customers. DCD also provides a good platform for us to communicate with both old and new customers, which in turn helps us to find new business opportunities. Therefore, we think that this event is of great significance”. - Linda Luo, Regional Business Management Manager, Anixter
- “We know that DCD is very influential in both China and the APAC region. That is why we want to use this platform to expand our influence in both China and Asia”. - Lou Jiaxi, Sales Director, KOHLER
- “As a long-time partner of DCD, we are very glad to participate in DCD Converged Events every year. For a long time, we do not treat DCD event as a simple exhibition service provider, but a good platform that enables good communication between us and exhibitors. It is also promoting the development of enterprises and their learning processes”. - Bao Kai, Marketing Manager, SDS
- “It is a very good event which provides very good insight and wide coverage of the data center. It is a great opportunity for attendees to learn from their peers and gain knowledge around industry trends. It deep dives into the choice of selections of data centers which is very useful.” - Jenny Gui, The Royal Bank of Scotland ( China) Co Ltd
- “DCD has opened a window to the world for all the players in data center, data cloud, big data, and convergence media end user. In a DCD conference, you can not only find the most leading technologies and products, but also the mature full line-up solution practices as well as the development mode to grow with clients. We wish that DCD will get better and better and believe that DCD will provide a better platform and consulting services for clients to network and communicate with each other.” - Jian Zhao, Shanghai Media Group