Aliyun told C114 that the MIIT would issue a list of trusted cloud service providers this week, and Aliyun has already been on the list. This is the first time of carrying out a quality certification of cloud computing by the authority in China, which is considered as a sign of large-scale procurement for cloud computing services by the government.
According to the introduction, the cloud server ECS, cloud database RDS and cloud storage OSS of Aliyun all have passed the assessment.
The authentication of trusted cloud services in China started in May of 2013, the Academy of Telecommunication Research (ATR) of the MIIT founded a "workgroup of trusted cloud services", and established the relevant standards.
According to the report released by ATR, the whole scale of China’s public cloud services market reached CNY 4.76 billion in 2013, which is yet still in its initial stage of development. In contrast, the market scale of global general cloud services reached $131.7 billion in 2013, and is expected to reach $244.2 billion in 2017. According to the survey conducted by ATR, due to a lack of standards, more than 50% of the customers don’t trust the cloud services.
In this certification of trusted cloud services, the cloud computing is defined as "public services" for the first time in China, and standards for the relevant cloud computing services has been established. Insiders of the industry believe that, the establishment of the service standards is the sign for the subsequent large-scale government procurement.
Encouraging the development of cloud computing through government procurement is not uncommon in the international community. In the end of 2010, the Obama government first proposed the "cloud priority" policy, and required the USA government to give priority to the cloud technologies in IT construction.
Thanks to the "cloud priority" policy, Amazon has become the world's largest cloud computing services provider, and its business has extended to more than 190 countries and regions in the world. The American government also saved a lot IT expenses, with an improvement of the operational efficiency of government agencies.
Some regional governments in domestic have also begun to utilize "cloud counting" services. Take the Hangzhou municipal government for example, it ordered a priority of cloud computing for the new information technology projects, and they need to hand in a written explanation if they don’t purchase the relevant cloud computing services.