Following the launch of my recent report, The Dynamics Of China’s Private Cloud Market, I’ve been getting briefing requests from vendors and inquiries from end users. My report addresses most of their concerns, such as the vendor landscape, business scenarios, and industry practices. However, following my discussions with many Chinese private cloud end users, I also thought it would be helpful to share with you the top developing trends among Chinese organizations using private cloud. They:

  • Are starting to expand private cloud scenarios for production applications.Initially, many Chinese organizations deployed private cloud solutions for development and testing scenarios. These organizations are now starting to transfer their business-critical workloads, such as CRM, databases, and other unique applications, to private cloud environments. Why? Because Chinese organizations have started to virtualize their critical workloads.For example, China Telecom set up a self-service private cloud platform for its eight province-level branch operators in 2011; in 2014, China Telecom started to gradually transfer its business and operations support systems (BSS/OSS) to the private cloud.
  • Prefer to use open-source-based private cloud solutions.Chinese organizations have three reasons for choosing open-source-based solutions. They want to: 1) train their staff on private cloud technologies; 2) avoid vendor lock-in; 3) save on tech spending. For example, Ping An Technology Group has used open-source-based solution CloudStack as its private cloud platform since 2013. In recent years, OpenStack has grown both in terms of its functionality and the number of deployments in the global market. In China, many vendors are developing private clouds based on OpenStack, and these initiatives are contributing to the open source community. Most importantly, the Chinese government would like to develop an ecosystem around OpenStack and so are encouraging SOEs to use OpenStack-based private cloud solutions. As a result, OpenStack will follow CloudStack to become a popular foundation for developing private cloud platforms for Chinese organizations.
  • Lack a technology portfolio and strategy around the private cloud.Forrester believes that developing technologies and strategies around the private cloud, such as DevOps, IT service management (ITSM), and hybrid cloud management, are important when organizations are planning for their tech future. However, Chinese organizations are still at an early stage in their cloud journey and haven’t got a mature plan for these yet.

This is a critical moment for China’s private cloud market — for both vendors and end users. Vendors: You must talk to your existing customers to understand their real thoughts and concerns about a private cloud strategy. End users: Rethink your infrastructure planning and consider whether you should also develop a private cloud project. Any concerns? Please contact me: fliu@forrester.com