Blue skies ahead for cloud services

Cloud computing will become even more important in the next few years and create new growth opportunities for companies, experts said.

Shi Lirong, president of telecoms firm ZTE Corp, said one of the reasons why big firms have not embraced cloud technologies that easily is due to the security vulnerabilities. To address this, cloud-computing providers must come out with business models for various companies, including large, small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals.

Though cloud computing has the potential to be the "new normal" of the information technology industry, it is still in early stages. China's public cloud services market value is expected to reach 1 billion yuan ($154 million) by the end of this year, but the investment by service providers would be nearly five times that, said experts.