Guizhou Ignites Big Data Boom, Drawing Makers from Across the Country
Original headline: Leading Enterprises Rush to Secure a Foothold, Gathering Makers for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Guizhou Builds the Nest to Attract Phoenixes in Big Data, Seizing the Initiative
On May 24, 2016, the Global Intelligent Terminal Industry Innovation and Development Summit and the China Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Academicians Forum were held in Guiyang (Network image: CCIDnet)
"Why did we come to Guizhou? You know!" These were the heartfelt words a "data maker" from another province said to Ma Ningyu, director of the Guizhou Provincial Economic and Information Commission. What does "know" mean? Ma Ningyu explained that Guizhou began working on big data in 2014, "jumping the gun" on other regions in China by two years. From a half-informed "outsider" to having an ever more complete set of development factors, Guizhou is becoming a "test field" for practitioners in the big data field at home and abroad. In 2015, because of big data, Guizhou became a destination for college graduates from across the country, ranking seventh nationwide. "Whether they are industry experts or grassroots makers, Guizhou's big data 'circle of friends' is growing larger and larger."
In pursuing big data, Guizhou is "straightening the curve" in its process of catching up from a late start. Refreshing air, abundant energy, a stable geological structure, and a land transport hub in the southwest... These innate advantages have given Guizhou a solid foundation for building large green data centers and opening up a development "tunnel."
To develop big data, you first need data. Where does the data come from? Internally, Guizhou has built the province-wide unified data storage and sharing platform "Cloud Guizhou," which currently gathers 50,000 GB of government affairs information, with an average daily data call volume of 1 billion times; externally, through data investment promotion, dozens of units and enterprises including the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, and iFlytek have clearly designated Guizhou for data resource storage. Where is the data stored? Guizhou centers on the data center bases in Gui'an New Area of the three major telecom operators - China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom - as well as Foxconn and Huawei, gathering a group of international-level, national-level, and industry-level data centers. At present, the standard data storage server capacity built and put into operation in the first phase by the three major operators alone has reached 160,000 units.
To store big data, the key is being able to apply it. Over the past two years, Guizhou has not only promoted the opening and sharing of relevant government data resources through legislation, but has also provided a "test field" environment that is most tolerant of trial and error and most forgiving of failure. Although jumping the gun does not mean leading, Guizhou's big data experiment has produced remarkable results: big data leading enterprises such as Alibaba, JD.com, Tencent, Inspur, Qualcomm, HP, Cisco, IBM, and Microsoft have settled in Guizhou, and various new technologies, new products, new business forms, and even new business models such as server chips, smartphones, wearable devices, and data cleaning, mining, and trading are being born here. The latest statistics show that big data has driven Guizhou to add 40,000 new employees, bringing the industry total to 160,000.
Leveraging big data to inspire the power of makers. With 13,000 participating teams and 40,000 participants from home and abroad, in 2016 the "Cloud Guizhou" Big Data Business Model Competition was more booming than Kang Keyan, director of the Guizhou Provincial Big Data Office, had imagined. "Holding the competition is both to spread and popularize big data knowledge and to attract talent to tap into application projects." The first competition in 2014 saw 94 high-quality projects land, some of which have grown into big data enterprises with global influence.
In February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Cyberspace Administration of China approved Guizhou's construction of the country's first national-level big data comprehensive pilot zone, and Guizhou transformed from a "test field" into a "pilot zone." From May 25 to 29, the China Big Data Industry Summit and the China E-Commerce Innovation and Development Summit will be held in Guiyang. The "Big Data Expo" was originally held at the Guiyang municipal level, and this year it has been upgraded to the national level. In the first quarter of this year, driven by key areas such as Guiyang, Zunyi, and Gui'an, the total scale of the province's big data industry increased by 34.8% year on year, driving the province's added value of industrial enterprises above designated size up by 0.8 percentage points.
Down-to-earth Guizhou is proving with facts: "Developing big data really makes sense." (Guiyang, May 23 dispatch - reporters Wan Xiubin, Wang Zhiqiu, Hao Yingcan)
Related links >>>
People's Daily: Building the country's first national-level big data comprehensive pilot zone
Guizhou's Big Data Industry Rises Suddenly (May 24, 2016, page 06)
After days of heavy rain, the flood season has arrived, and Li Sheng, chairman of Guizhou Oriental Century Technology Co., Ltd., has been extremely busy. "We need to send people to the provincial flood control office, and we also need to use the 'Oriental Auspicious Cloud' system at the company to predict flood and waterlogging disasters, and report immediately whenever there is a disaster."
Traditional flood and waterlogging disaster prediction relies on surface data and can only predict the possibility within 20 minutes to half an hour before a flood occurs, which means that once a flood or waterlogging disaster occurs, local residents find it very difficult to evacuate within a short time. "We divide the globe into grids, quantified to one grid every five kilometers. At the same time, we collect information from global satellite remote sensing, topography and landforms, and weather forecasts, and then through algorithmic analysis, we can derive the possible rainfall for each grid over the next 72 hours."
In recent years, Guizhou has taken developing the big data industry as a strategic measure for catching up from a late start. Relying on the National Big Data Guizhou Comprehensive Pilot Zone, it has focused on cultivating the electronic information industry led by big data, persisted in advancing the entire chain including data centers, terminal products, chips and other integrated circuits, and cloud platform applications, and developed big data core business forms, related business forms, and derivative business forms around commercial, government, and civilian use, helping accelerate the development of the big data industry and striving to turn the pilot zone into a demonstration zone, big data into a major industry, and major opportunities into major dividends.
From Innate Advantages to Early First-Mover Practice
Playing the "First Move" Well
"Guiyang's preferential policies for the big data industry attracted me to come from Beijing to Guiyang to start a business." Wang Sanshou, executive president of the Guiyang Big Data Exchange and founder of Jiusifang Big Data, joked that he is a "Guiyang drifter." "There are quite a few people who, drawn by Guizhou's big data industry, have 'drifted' to Guiyang to start businesses."
What Wang Sanshou said is true. From its inauguration in mid-April last year to the first anniversary of its listing and operation, the Guiyang Big Data Exchange's transaction amount has exceeded 70 million yuan, its membership has grown to more than 400, and a single transaction has exceeded 10 million yuan.
2013 was widely regarded by the industry as the epoch-making "first year of big data," and it was also the year Guizhou planned its big data industry. In the eyes of the outside world, the inland province of Guizhou is underdeveloped. Although it has clear mountains and beautiful waters and abundant resources, the structural contradictions of traditional industries remain prominent and are far from meeting the demands of the times and the development goal of comprehensive moderate prosperity.
In January 2012, the State Council issued the "Several Opinions on Further Promoting the Sound and Rapid Economic and Social Development of Guizhou," which clearly proposed: promote the construction of information network facilities in Guizhou, cultivate and develop strategic emerging industries such as electronics and the new generation of information technology, encourage technological research and development, and improve the capacity to support scientific and technological innovation.
After in-depth analysis of its own advantageous resources, Guizhou found that it had a natural "affinity" with the big data industry. A pleasant climate with no severe cold in winter and no scorching heat in summer - data centers can directly use outside air for cooling, saving 10%-30% electricity compared with data centers under other equivalent conditions; abundant energy such as coal and hydropower, with relatively low electricity prices, can directly reduce enterprise production costs; a stable geological structure, far from earthquake zones, makes it a safe choice for data disaster recovery and backup centers.