by Hovhannes Avoyan
| Oct 05, 2009
The U.S. isn’t the only government embracing cloud computing. I just read that China’s local government agencies are giving the cloud a shot, too, and in the process giving some new business to IBM.
Dongying, near China’s second-largest oil field, plans to become a “smart city” by building the Yellow River Delta Cloud Computing Center – expected to be functional before the end of the year. Its objectives are to promote e-government, plug the region as more services-focused and help develop more innovative apps for its petroleum industry. In other words, it will use the cloud to promote development in the region.
The tech behind its cloud is IBM’s scalable, redundant, pre-packaged, Linux-based CloudBurst 1.1 solution – its instant “cloud-in-a-box,” according to a late September trade magazine story. Dongying is IBM’s first CloudBurst cloud customer – but part of its Smart City marketing blueprint for China.
While IBM scores a sale and China gets a cloud, the story nonetheless dramatized the reluctance many businesses still feel about migrating to cloud computing, according to IBM’s VP of cloud labs and high-performance on-demand solutions, Willy Chiu. In the piece, he said that the company in June began offering an IBM Public Developer Cloud to select customers, but there have been no takers so far. He attributed it to “comfort level and cultural dislocation.”
Even when IBM established its own internal innovation cloud, developers clung to virtual server images as though they were physical boxes…refraining to shut them down when not needed.
Ah well, perhaps China has more Buddhists …who consider everything – including this keyboard I’m using – an illusion, anyway.
