Intel Announces Investment in Chinese Cloud Services
Intel’s venture capital funding group has invested an undisclosed amount in three Chinese cloud service providers. These significant investments represent the pending explosion of cloud services in the Asia-Pacific region. The three companies in which Intel has invested their venture capital dollars are Shanghai Yeapoo Information Technology, Tianjin Zhongke BlueWhale Information Technology, and Wuxi China Cloud Technology Service.
Reports show that China is steadily building out more data center infrastructure and while the country is still in the process of virtualizing much of the infrastructure already present, the cloud hasn’t become a staple of life quite as quickly as it has in the Western hemisphere. Analysts believe that countries in the Asian-Pacific rim such as Australia and China will certainly catch up with the Western Hemisphere in terms of cloud infrastructure, and investments from groups like Intel will certainly help. Intel has seen a rise in profitability from China over the past couple years. The CPU maker has noted that it has seen double digit growth in China over the past 5 years and Intel feels like now is the time to capitalize on the cloud in China.
Xu Shengyuan is the general manager of Intel Capital China. In PC World magazine, he was quoted as saying “The age of cloud computing has come. We all know that cloud computing is a major opportunity.”
Of the three companies that Intel has invested in, each company has a different specialty when it comes to the cloud. Yeapoo helps build out cloud based websites for mobile devices. BlueWhale is a cloud network storage provider and Wuxi China Cloud compliments BlueWhale by being one of the predominant cloud infrastructure providers in China.
Each of these investments is set to pave the way for what Intel believes will be the next technological craze based on the cloud: Wearable Technology. Although Wearable Technology is on the uptick, Xu Shengyuan went on to say “We won’t necessarily invest in a product a consumer ends up buying.”
