"The Chinese government supports newly established innovative enterprises very enthusiatically, which encouraged me to pursue higher quality cloud technology," said Yu Jiawei, founder of Qingyuan Technology.

The company was established in March, 2015, focusing on cloud computing based on “containers” — a virtualization technology, which packages data in such a way that greatly speeds up the transfer process. By fully encapsulating information within a digital environment, the information is quickly available on almost any platform or machine.

The company aims to bring international container technology to China and use a cloud-virtual-machine-binding method to expand the acceptability of such technology in China, helping Chinese companies efficiently use Internet services.

Qingyuan is now applying for 14 patents with four innovation functions: mixed management of multiple clouds, cross-platform transfers of service, mixed arrangement and management of the "containers" and virtual machinery, and management of container clusters based on their business model.

Yu Jiawei, founder of Qingyuan Technology. [Photo/Qingyuan Technology]

"We are special."

Although there are several companies offering cloud services, Qingyuan has a different business model, service approach, support for specific enterprise application, and automatic operation deployments.

Most other companies deploy cloud applications over the cloud, but Qingyuan uses a mixed of public and private cloud structure and can solve problems in the management of multi-cloud platforms, transplantation and the monitoring and deployment of multiple-data centers.

Yu said he did not think there were any enterprises occupying exactly the same fields as that of Qingyuan. "We are special," he added.

The company recently joined the Microsoft Accelerator program, which was named the "Top incubator in China" and the "Best Maker Space in China" in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The Accelerator aims to offer a comprehensive and high-quality service for innovative entrepreneurial companies in various areas including human resources, financing, strategy and marketing.

As it is a technical team supporting other technical companies to use Internet services more efficiently, it can both benefit from the Microsoft platform and contribute to the incubator itself and other enterprises in it, which realizes a win-win situation among the startups and between enterprises and the incubation platform.

For example, the company is now offering cloud services to Changping Park of the Zhongguancun Science Park in Beijing and it is giving lectures to other companies to help with their cloud data management.

During its campaign to enter the Microsoft Accelerator, Qingyuan obtained all passes and several judges from financial institutions also gave Qingyuan positive comments, which increased the team's confidence in their business model.

"The recognition and affirmation of these financial institutes encouraged us a lot," Yu said, "Their positive comments mean our direction on the combination of container and cloud technology is correct and promising."

Yu Jiawei, CTO of Qingyuan Technology. [Microsoft Accelerator]

The Losses and The Gains

Yu used to work at Microsoft in the US for many years and has received top employee awards. He was a start-up member of Azure, the team that first invented cloud technology, and earned a decent salary. But then, in 2015, he gave it all up and went back to China, setup his own company.

When talking about his reason to return China to establish his own business, he said China is adopting cloud computing technology at a fast speed and Beijing, with a strong entrepreneurship atmosphere and rapid adoption of new techniques, is a city that may become the Chinese version of “Silicon Valley”.

In addition, Yu analyzed that as China is developing fast, its market will show even greater interests in the progress of basic technologies. So far, the government and investors in China have given very high regards to cloud computing and container technology -- governments such as Changping district have been supportive of such developments.

Yu added, he would like to seize the opportunity expand cloud technology in China.

Hard Times

Qingyuan was set up in Seattle, the US, and most of its team members originally worked in various American companies, so it was very difficult for them to get used to a Chinese entrepreneurship environment in a short time when they relocated to China.

To achieve their goals, team members have to work overtime nearly every day, which is rare in the US.

However, when thinking of the expectations and supports the company was getting from the government and investors, Yu decided to keep on and continue to push his team.

Staff of Qingyuan Technology pose in their office. [Photo/Qingyuan Technology]

Not only that, but things were made more difficult because of the low acceptability of container technology in the Chinese market. To solve this problem, the company bound the container technology with a virtual machine. This gives clients period to trust the new technology.

Despite facing such difficulties, Yu is still confident in his company.

" A lot of entrepreneurship in China relies more on trends," Yu said, "People like to follow the trend without considering what they are really good at. Instead, Qingyuan's founding team has a well-planned mission and the other two co-founders are also full of entrepreneurial passion."

Aiming for Higher Goals

Qingyuan received 20 million yuan in angel investment for startup capital and has launched four private programs. It is now planning to start a new round of financing and further polish their products — the application models and mixed cloud technology development — to meet more industries' needs.

Recently, Qingyuan has signed cooperation contracts with Tsinghua UniGroup and VNetoo and it is the only partner of the two companies for cloud technology.

In the near future, Qingyuan will focus more on four industries: finance, energy, communications and the Internet.

"The Chinese market is a preemptive market and Qingyuan is promoting the mixed cloud technology before it enters the market," Yu said.