The base is in Block C of the Software Square Building, in Zhongguancun's Zpark, which already has more than 10 cloud computing enterprises, in an 11,000-square-meter space. Photo from people.com.cn

A second Beijing cloud computing base, in Zhongguancun Cloud Valley, went into operation, on Aug 16, as part of the city's Xiangyun Project, which started in 2010.

The base is in Block C of the Software Square Building, in Zhongguancun's Zpark, which already has more than 10 cloud computing enterprises, in an 11,000-square-meter space.

The building, which has an unusual appearance, provides a convenient location for cloud computing companies to do business. The first floor has a cafe with a reading section, and offers high-level lectures on computing from time to time The second floor holds the cloud computing exposition center, for exhibiting new products and techniques. The fourth floor has the Geek lab, where engineers and geeks of various kinds can spend their free time. The building has enough office space for over 500 personnel and the 10 odd companies that have settled there, including Yoyo Systems Ltd, Cloud Times Ltd, China-cloud.com Ltd.

Beijing's first cloud computing base -- China Cloud Computing Industry Park -- opened two years ago in E-Town, with a total investment of 26.1 billion yuan ($4.1 billion). It consists of five parts, including a Cloud Computing Equipment Manufacturing Base, Cloud Computing Innovation Center, and KDDI Data Base. The park plans to attract above 50 billion yuan in investment, and wants to create about 50,000 jobs and have annual sales of 200 billion yuan.

Jiang Guiping, the vice-director of the Municipal Commission of the Economy and Information Technology, pointed out that, while the park concentrates on hardware manufacturing, Zhongguancun Cloud Valley concentrates on software development for applied cloud computing services, large data computing and cloud computing terminals. In the two years since Beijing started the Xiangyun Project, about 100 domestic and foreign companies have joined in, and a cloud computing industrial chain has taken shape.

Beijing followed a "Fund and Base" mode of operations in building the two computing bases -- Zhongguancun Cloud Valley and China Cloud Computing Industry Park -- which will certainly speed up the growth of its cloud computing industry.

Edited by Roger Bradshaw