Foxconn Technology and 21Vianet Group Team up on Cloud Service

The Foxconn Technology Group of Taiwan and 21Vianet Group, Inc. of China have signed a partnership agreement to tap the market of Infrastructure as a Service-based (IaaS-based) cloud service by operating data centers in Tianjin, Guiyang, and Shenzhen of China, as well as Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.

China's No.1 provider of carrier-neutral internet data center services, 21Vianet, will speed up the deployment of huge IaaS data centers to keep up with the increased demand for cloud-service market after the agreement.

21Vianet Chairman Chen Sheng predicts that over the next five years each of its customers will increase traffic on the Internet by one thousand times, considerably changing the operation, design, manufacturing, and construction of a data center infrastructure. Accordingly the company's partnership with Foxconn aims to build larger, newer data center infrastructure.

Foxconn Chairman Terry Guo said his group,  currently Taiwan's largest manufacturing conglomerate, will broadly transform itself into a cloud computing-based industry by 2020 from a manufacturer, and that in line with the transformation the group will use cloud-based management system to handle factory, quality inspection, and product design to boost efficiency while cutting cost.

Guo pointed out that when connected to cloud-based management system, production machines in the group's factories will receive signal to replace components after running pre-set cycle, which will minimize defect rate.

Guo reported that around 60% of the world's running data center servers were built by his group from design to operation. He believes in the future instead of data size, traffic volume will be the central issue of servers, being confident of completing a data center included in the partnership in three to six months, compared with one to two years as usual.

He said the group will set up a huge databank of millions of molds and hardware it has made and save such data on clouds for availability to people, who can thereby shorten time to design new molds and hardware. (KL)