Cloud computing is not a purely technical concept, but a new business model formed by the integration of ICT technology and business models, and a new application model. Nowadays, many cities in China are laying out cloud computing, such as Beijing's "Xiangyun Project". Urbanization has brought people a convenient life, but it has also brought problems such as traffic congestion, environmental damage, energy shortages, and employment tension. This provides new market opportunities for information technology integration and enterprise business model innovation.
Neusoft believes that city-level cloud computing construction should be driven by the application needs of urbanization. Focusing on the application needs of cities, Neusoft proposes to build a "cloud city" to reform the operation model of various services to improve the competitiveness of cities in various aspects such as economy, society, culture and environment, so as to provide a more harmonious environment for city residents, enterprises, government and tourists.
Urban applications give rise to the "cloud city"
The "cloud city" is built by taking into account various factors such as the city's economy, society and culture. Neusoft selects five areas that are essential to people's lives, related to people's livelihoods and capable of stimulating the development of related industries, and builds five basic cloud service platforms, including health cloud, education cloud, transportation cloud, government cloud and SME cloud, as well as establishing public clouds and industry clouds. Neusoft hopes to become a builder and service provider of "cloud cities".
The Xikang cloud platform is a typical example of Neusoft's health cloud construction. It consists of four parts: a value network for personal and health services, a cloud-based Xikang health management center, an interactive network covering individuals, families, enterprises and institutions, and health terminals and various mature applications for individuals, families, enterprises and institutions.
The front-end of Xikang Cloud Platform connects to families, villages, communities and enterprises through the Internet of Things and sensors to collect and monitor users' health data and automatically transmit them to the Cloud Platform. The cloud platform consists of data centers, medical experts and large tertiary hospitals, supporting functions such as disseminating medical knowledge, developing health intervention programs, establishing healthy communities and health education. Through the health cloud, the government, hospitals, senior care organizations, financial institutions, enterprises, insurance companies and other ****together form an ecosystem that can interact.
The transportation cloud is mainly built to ease the growing traffic pressure in cities, providing navigation services to road vehicles through data analysis on the cloud platform, thus creating an efficient and smooth urban transportation system. In addition, the traffic cloud platform also provides human assistance, in-vehicle entertainment systems, security and remote diagnostic services, as well as various services based on geographic location.
The education cloud has more users. Neusoft's planned education cloud covers various groups of people such as school students, government clerks, R&D experts, retired senior citizens and travelers, aiming to provide a city-level digital education system to serve urban citizens and improve their cultural literacy.
Government Cloud is a public **** cloud platform, a fundamental platform built on the management data of each functional department, which realizes resource **** enjoyment and on-demand services by integrating information.
Enterprise cloud is a new opportunity and market in cloud computing. Different types of platforms should be established for the different needs of large enterprises and SMEs. For large enterprises, Neusoft believes that a "cloud factory" model should be established, i.e., a digital factory, to carry out cloud services in the whole life cycle of the enterprise, including cloud design, cloud manufacturing and cloud services, so that every product restructuring of the enterprise will have intelligence. When the service object is small and medium-sized enterprises, cloud platform operators should use government resources to establish public **** cloud service platforms, so that enterprises can use them for human resource management, small ERP management, logistics management and so on, in order to reduce the enterprise's IT cost expenditures, and to help the enterprise improve efficiency.
Cloud services are ubiquitous, in addition to these "five auspicious clouds", "cloud city" can also cover e-commerce cloud, logistics cloud, environmental weather cloud, media cloud, search cloud.
"Cloud city" landing should be the first planning
Past, there is a misunderstanding of the understanding of cloud computing, that the construction of cloud computing first to buy a large area of land, the establishment of data centers. But in fact, cloud computing is not a completely technical issue, but a business model innovation, it will be the past enterprise self-build mode, into the mode of purchasing related services through pay-as-you-go. The biggest market for cloud computing is the public service-oriented field. Neusoft believes that the construction of a "cloud city" should start with a general plan, then be implemented according to the plan, and finally the most important, complex and difficult part -- operation.
The design and planning of a cloud city should be application-driven, based on the overall needs of the city, and key applications can be piloted first, and then expanded to other application areas after accumulating some experience. In the design and planning, the city should give full consideration to security and scalability, consider the practicality of the physical space, the reasonableness of equipping corresponding hosts and other equipment according to the network requirements of different cities, and provide a scalable cloud platform.
Additionally, in terms of implementation and operation, the government should adhere to the principle of "the government sets the stage, the enterprise sings the show". Government departments will promote the application, and enterprises will be responsible for the operation and related services. The service fees paid by users will be used for storage and network re-expansion.
Operation services are a new market that Neusoft values. For this reason, Neusoft has set up a cloud creativity center, which is equivalent to a company-level research and development center, to establish a unified cloud management platform, and then use the health cloud and the education cloud to create practical cloud industry applications.
Now, Neusoft has established healthy city pilots in Tangshan, Chengmai, Wuxi, Zhengzhou and Anshan, where it integrates medical resources, builds dynamic health records, and realizes regional medical resource ****sharing. Neusoft's "Healthy Tangshan, Happy People" program for Tangshan covers 7.3 million people there.
In 2011, Neusoft celebrated its 20th birthday nationwide with three goals for future endeavors: globalization, transformation and operational excellence. Cloud computing is a typical service-oriented business. Therefore transformation is an important task for Neusoft. In the future, Neusoft will strengthen its service-oriented business and shift more from B2B to B2C in the fields of health management and education.
In the future, we also hope that through the development of globalized business, the revenue from international business will account for more than 60% of Neusoft's total revenue, so as to contribute more to the development of China's economy and the development of the world's IT technology.
(This article is based on Lu Chaoxia's speech at the 2011 China Information Industry Economic Conference, and has not been reviewed by me.)