Chinese companies embrace cloud computing

Chinese companies are quickly embracing cloud computing to lower costs and enhance business efficiency, according to a senior industry executive.

The mushrooming of new companies in China and the growing awareness deal of data emergencies across big organizations are contributing to the growing need for a hybrid cloud environment, meaning the co-existence of both public and private cloud, said Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, a leading cloud infrastructure service provider.

"VMware allows for a seamless connection between a client's on-premises data centers and what they have on public cloud servers, giving enterprises the elasticity and ease of being able to scale up," he said.

For instance, hybrid cloud is the best solution when an institution's data center suddenly fails and there's a need to migrate all the data to the cloud. It is much more cost-effective than building a separate data center from the scratch and on one's own, he said.

The company has recently entered into a partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba, to deliver such hybrid cloud solutions and help organizations with their digital transformation.

Combining VMware's hybrid cloud software portfolio with Alibaba Cloud's scalable cloud infrastructure, enterprises will be able to easily extend their existing workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud.

Earlier this month, it also forged a partnership with China Mobile to deliver cloud-based desktop-as-a-service. The new service will support enterprises requiring data protection and desktop security to accelerate their digital transformation journey to the cloud.

Desktop-as-a-service is a cloud service that hosts a virtual desktop, enabling users to access their applications anytime, anywhere and on any device. It can also accelerate the deployment of desktops by more than 80 percent, speed up trouble shooting by eight times and save over 40 percent of operation and maintenance cost, the pair said.

Gelsinger said partnerships are likely to help VMware tap into more Chinese customers that were previously either unattainable or use only a fraction of its services.