IBM and Wanda Team Up on Cloud Technology in China

source: highlandmirror.com

IBM has partnered with the entertainment and property conglomerate of China Dalian Wanda Group to offer cloud services to Chinese firms, according to the US technology provider.

Through Wanda Cloud Company, the newly formed cloud computing partnership, they will provide specific IBM cloud platform and infrastructure as service technologies in China.

Based on the cloud platform of IBM, the new offerings of Wanda will concentrate on Chinese enterprise customers looking forward to use the cloud infrastructure of IBM and the platform of Big Blue as service technologies.

IBM is also planning to launch Watson services via the new joint venture, beginning with Watson Conservation services prior to the rolling out of extra Watson solutions in future. The company denied revealing the details of financial considerations or ownership percentages.

Through this new partnership, Chinese customers will also gain access to IBM’s advanced technologies like Watson supercomputer, support for IoT (Internet of Things) apps, and blockchain.

The association between Wanda and IBM will be “responsible for distributing, building and operating the IBM cloud platform in China,” according to a spokeswoman from IBM.

Wanda will set up enterprise solutions via the platform IBM Cloud, made possible using data center support throughout the country.

In November, the cloud division of Alibaba Holdings Ltd announced strategies to set up 4 new data facilities in China to grab the market share from the top players such as Microsoft and Amazon.com.

The global cloud computing market (referred to as data storage on remote networks) is likely to touch 135 billion dollars before 2020, according to Canalys, a research firm.  

According to IBM, this partnership will not only help the enterprise players in China in “enhancing efficiency, improve productivity and drive innovation,” but it will also favor “Internet+” strategy of China.

There’s no doubt that the country is popular for its Great Firewall of China and stringent censorship regulations, though similar to any other developed nation, there are entrepreneurs and developers that wish to benefit from new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), IoT, cloud computing, and mobility.

A spokeswoman from IBM said that the company will share the revenue, though the details of the deal size were not revealed. The agreement was signed by Ginni Rometty, the chief executive of IBM and Wang Jianlin, the chairman of Wanda Group.

This is not the first cloud foray of IBM in China. Two years back, the firm said that it was working with 21 Vianet, a Chinese tech firm to get cloud services to China, which is a vast market.