Microsoft seeks greater presence in China

 

Visitors experience Microsoft's augmented reality devices during the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, November

Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to tap into China's burgeoning cloud computing market. The US-based tech firm is scheduled to showcase its new hybrid cloud capabilities in China.

In cloud computing, the public cloud is delivered over the Internet and shared between organizations, while the private cloud is dedicated solely to one organization. Hybrid cloud is a solution that uses public and private clouds.

Microsoft's new hybrid cloud move comes after the company brought a new data center region in China online in March, meaning that since 2014 its cloud computing capacity in China has grown about twelvefold. times.

Li Ming, Azure China Strategy Leader and Director of Product Marketing at Microsoft, stressed that the company is dedicated to using its digital technologies to help both multinationals coming to China and Chinese companies going global, boosting their strategies. of digital transformation.

Microsoft said its new hybrid cloud capabilities are based in part on existing Azure cloud services such as Azure Arc, an important component of Microsoft's hybrid cloud strategy. Introduced in 2019, the service allows you to manage on-premises servers through the same interface they use to orchestrate Microsoft public cloud infrastructure resources. For administrators, performing infrastructure maintenance tasks in a single, centralized interface can be more efficient than the traditional approach of using multiple tools.

Chris Tao, azure business group leader at Microsoft China, recalled that China's hybrid cloud market has maintained a vigorous and rapid development trajectory. He added that the popularity of private cloud and hybrid cloud has always been an important feature in the Chinese market, which is quite different from other markets.

Most other regions of the world are dominated by public cloud, and only supplemented by private cloud. But the consensus that Microsoft has seen in the Chinese market is that the government, enterprise industries, corporate customers and foreign companies are very interested in the hybrid cloud strategy.

To better meet local demand, Microsoft is bringing hybrid cloud technologies to China. This is part of the peso's long-term commitment to the Chinese market. With a 30-year presence in China, Microsoft aims to jump on the bandwagon of the nation's next wave of digital development.

Joe Bao, president of Microsoft China, noted in an interview with China Daily earlier this year that the new data center Microsoft launched in northern China in March is the largest it has in the Chinese market.

Currently, about 40 percent of Microsoft's cloud computing business in China comes from helping multinationals set up such operations in the nation, 40 percent comes from helping Chinese companies go global, and about 20 percent of industry-specific experience delivery within China.

Bao stressed that Microsoft now has hundreds of thousands of developers, partners and customers in its cloud in the China market, and its local cloud business has been outperforming the industry average and its internal targets.

"We're seeing more than 50 percent year-on-year growth on average in areas like helping multinationals land in China," Bao added.

Amid accelerating digital transformation in the world's second-largest economy, Microsoft is prioritizing local solutions for automotive, healthcare, retail, low-carbon manufacturing and development.

Market research firm Canalys said Microsoft had a 21 percent market share of global spending on cloud infrastructure services in the first quarter, making it the second largest provider of cloud services. after Amazon Web Services.