Hohhot walks on the ‘cloud’

(chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2016-11-04

As the capital of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot has recently made great strides in cloud computing construction and big data development, with the ambition to build China’s Cloud Valley in the future.

In recent years, Hohhot has accelerated the advance of big data and information industry to develop into a national-level smart city with numerous Internet applications, public cloud services, Internet plus trades, industrial databases, e-commerce platforms, and pro-people governmental websites.

Recently, the Hohhot government announced that several new policies related to big data promotion and the information industry are to be implemented soon. These polices aim to attract talent and investors to come to Hohhot to boost the emerging sector.

About the Internet application, the China Telecom Data Center, built in Hohhot, has powered decades of renowned companies across China, including Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, Sohu, and Sougou, to ensure their daily online operations.

At present, Hohhot houses six e-commerce clusterareas, including Jinchuan, Jinhai, Yuquan, Shengle, Hongsheng, and Jinqiao, and more than 1,600 e-businesses in the sectors of software design, data analysis, education and training, logistics, and many other trans-industry services based upon e-platforms.

A public service system, based on big data technology, will utilize a scientific approach to managing public services for citizens, including food safety, responding to consumer complaints, paying pensions, employment and unemployment settlements, community infrastructure, health care, and social insurance. It will simplify a series of administrative procedures and benefit residents from both urban and rural areas.

Relying on big data technology, the city is attempting to build a cloud platform for its leading industries such as clean energy, the dairy industry, biological medicine, environmental protection, and rare earth minerals; to exhibit their products, high-level technologies, management experience, marketing skills, and after-sale services.

The Hohhot Municipal Cloud Computing Center, has received 60 million yuan ($8.9 million) in investment from the local finance department, which aims to manage the non-confidential services of 37 governmental departments in the city. Thus, the info-sharing rate increases from 10 percent to 70 percent within these departments, while the cost decreases approximately 30 percent.

The government has made out a plan to transit 90 percent of the governmental affairs onto the cloud platform in 2017, and by then 60 percent of data is expected to be cataloged among the municipal departments.