China, Mirantis, News & Analysis, Open Source, OpenStack, UCloud

Mirantis and UCloud in joint bid to tap massive potential of Chinese cloud market

ChinaSoftware and services vendor Mirantis and Chinese cloud operator UCloud have announced a joint venture to speed OpenStack adoption in China’s finance, telecom, state-owned enterprises and large internet businesses.

The venture, dubbed UMCloud, will be led by UCloud CEO and founder Xinhua Ji with head offices in Shanghai, China.

Investment in cloud computing infrastructure in China is estimated by consultancy Bain & Company to be growing faster than overall IT spending and projected to reach $20 billion by 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 40% to 45%. In 2014, China had more than 640 million internet users – more than the USA, India and Japan combined. In 2013, smartphone use in China exceeded 700 million units and 530 million of these Chinese smartphone users accessed the internet from their mobile device.

Cloud computing is a national strategic policy and the government included it in the nation’s 12th Five-Year Plan. Last December, the Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) officially declared its intention to support OpenStack ecosystems and to encourage state-owned enterprises to use OpenStack-based cloud products.

California based software and service vendor Mirantis is described as pure-play OpenStack company with installations at AT&T, Ericsson, Walmart and Wells Fargo. It has been funded by a quarter of a billion dollars in venture capital since 2012 and is the second highest contributor of open source software code to OpenStack. Mirantis’ Chinese clients include telco hardware makers Jiesai, Huawei and ZTE.

UCloud is China’s top independent public cloud service provider with clients using e-commerce, gaming, mobile internet and SaaS services, from data centres in China, Hong Kong and the US. The company announced a $100 million Series C financing round in April, with $160 million raised to date.

“China and the United States are two countries where cloud computing is developing the fastest,” said Alex Freedland, president and co-founder of Mirantis, “we see unlimited potential for OpenStack as a major cloud engine in China.”