Category Archives: China Unicom

China Unicom, Datacentre, News & Analysis, Telco Cloud, Telefonica

China Unicom and Telefónica in global data centre sharing agreement

Reflections are seen on a logo of Spain's telecommunications giant Telefonica in MadridTelefónica and China Unicom have agreed to share their international data centre capacity for multinational clients across Europe, The Americas and Asia.

The initial agreement covers three major data centres from each operator but, the companies say, this could be the first step towards larger scale cloud cooperation.

The pooling of resources means China Unicom can support customers seeking to expand into Europe and The Americas while Telefónica can strengthen its proposition across Asia.The cloud computing aspect of the agreement includes IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) with virtual servers and multi-cloud solutions.

China Unicom’s customers can now benefit from Telefónica’s data centre presence in Sao Paolo in Brazil, Miami in the US and Alcalá de Henares in Madrid, Spain. The extent of the partnership will expand as Telefónica commits additional investment towards new infrastructure, facilities and multi-cloud solutions, it says. Conversely, Telefónica can use the cloud capacity of China Unicom’s data centres located across China in Langfang, Shanghai and Chongqing. This, it says, means it can offer end-to-end service delivery for its multinational customers.

China Unicom’s data centre provides international connectivity services including virtual private networks, multi protocol label switching (MPLS) and Global LAN. Internet access for customers’ servers can be offered as an option to the standard service. Every China Unicom Point of Presence comes with ‘meet me’ room services. The mutual colocation service also offers local support for customer equipment.

Telefónica has a presence in 21 countries and a customer base of 329 million accesses around the world, with its major markets being in Spain, Europe and Latin America. Telecom operator China Unicom offers mobile broadband (WCDMA, LTE FDD, TD-LTE), fixed-line broadband, GSM, fixed-line local access, ICT, data communications and related services. It has a total of 439 million subscribers.

Akamai, Asia Pacific, China Unicom, Networks, News & Analysis, Noam Freedman, Telco Cloud, Vendor

Akamai, China Unicom strike cloud deal

China Unicom may be using the Akamai deal to bolster its appeal outside China

China Unicom may be using the Akamai deal to bolster its appeal outside China

China Unicom and Akamai have announced a partnership that will see the two companies integrate their cloud services and content delivery network, respectively.

The deal between China Unicom’s cloud division CU Cloud and Akamai will see the former offer the latter’s full portfolio of content delivery, web performance and security offerings, a move CU Cloud said will improve global access to its growing suite of cloud services.

Akamai’s turnkey CDN technology will also underpin global delivery of its cloud services, CU Cloud said.

“China Unicom is a major carrier in China, serving the global internet market,” said Noam Freedman, senior vice president of Akamai’s global networks division. “We’re excited to be partnering with CU cloud to tap into the fast-growing China cloud and CDN market. Akamai sees increased demand for delivering content to Chinese internet users from global customers. With this strategic partnership, we believe Akamai is best positioned to serve this growing need.”

China Unicom has for the past few years targeted cloud services fairly aggressively. In 2013 it was revealed the company was teaming up with a other incumbents including China Mobile and China Telecom on the construction of massive cloud computing datacentres, with total investment from all three operators topping $3bn.

It has also partnered with other local specialists like Huawei and Pacnet on cloud infrastructure and service development.

The latest move may be a sign that China Unicom has set its sights beyond the local market and wants to compete with other increasingly global cloud providers with roots in China – like Alibaba and Pacnet, which have also bolstered global access to their platforms in a bid to cater mainly to large Chinese multinationals.