Chips War

My previous post would not be to the point without analyzing in more details the situation around microprocessors in China and how it could evolve. For what was initially the competition between developed nations fighting for market dominance, is about to become the most important global geopolitical battle, which I think can be called ‘Chips War’ between the US and China.
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China AI 2023

Some analysts have recently said that the West can either technologically become the follower of China, or slowly decline into the status of a colony, or if it wants to avoid these scenarios, take urgent actions to leapfrog the current status of lethargy and denial. Read this article on how the approach to AI differs between China and the West, and why Europe has to take action now.
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German Weiqi

After the visit of Annalena Baerbock to Beijing few months ago, another significant event is the publication of German Strategy on China, a document that aims to describe the view of Germany on the future of the bilateral and multilateral relationships with China. The document is important, as it includes sections on how EU should align the position on China, and as it could also inspire similar policies in other countries like Switzerland.

It is important to mention that the document comes two years after EU parliament rejected the comprehensive trade agreement between EU and China, which included important clauses of opening Chinese markets in various industries for EU companies. The Strategy on China doesn’t refer to that Agreement, doesn’t comment it, and doesn’t propose any similar initiative to be renegotiated with China.

China is described as a great economic, technological, political and military power. The document seems to be written several months ago, as it doesn’t include any mention of recent diplomatic events like for example brokering Saudi-Iranian agreement to re-establish normal diplomatic relationships, or expected expansion of BRICS and SCO organizations where China plays key role.

It is not clear who are the authors of this document. But as Annalena Baerbock presented this document in MERICS forum, it could be assumed that MERICS analysts contributed in its preparation.

Here is my point of view on this Strategy.
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ChinaIT: Aliyun (阿里云)

October 27, 2014

Owner of Alibaba (阿里巴巴) is known in the West as Jack Ma, but his real name is Ma Yun (马云), or if translated literaly : Cloud Ma. If we consider the fact that the word “cloud” appears one hundred times in the Alibaba’s IPO prospectus, this anectode about the Ma Yun’s name shows also very clearly that the world’s biggest e-commerce company based in Hangzhou sees itself as a major cloud services provider.

For those who would like to know more about this world-class business, I will analyze the structure of Alibaba Group and then place the focus on their IT operations. The story about Alibaba is a blueprint for successful cloud and e-commerce companies.

Alibaba’s main source of revenue is a group of e-commerce businesses:

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ChinaIT: Infocore (信核数据)

2014, September 7

Storage virtualization is not a new concept, but in the light of disaster recovery requirements, cloud computing and big data, it is still a hot topic. Storage virtualization allows your applications to see data being stored on a logical volume, while the configuration and location of the physical storage resources are unknown to you and completely irrelevant. This allows transparency in moving the data from one location to another, uninterupted service delivery during infrastructure migrations and increased data protection during disasters.

Storage virtualization controller is a device that is actually doing the whole work : mapping the underlying disk systems with logical volumes, replicating data to your secondary data center, providing data snapshots for the database backups, deciding and automatically moving data to the faster flash-based SSD disks if they are frequently accessed, etc. This is a very sophisticated piece of equipment that has to perform flawlessly, since all applications and business processes depend on the underlying data.

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ChinaIT: Geak (果壳)

2014, August 31

The gadget of 2014 is definitely not a smartphone, but a smartwatch. If the revenues of the global watch industry are stable at around $60B, the smartwatch market has been increasing tenfold per year and is estimated to reach $2.5B in 2014.

Among the companies that offer innovative products, Shanghai-based Geak company is forerunner in one domain: they are preparing to be first in the world to launch the round face smartwatch in September 2014 – Geak 2. The new Geak 2 watch will also feature Android 4.3 OS, a completely independent Chinese app ecosystem, and low energy consuming CPU. Take a glimpse here at the design.

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ChinaIT: Umeng (友盟)

2014, August 22

Umeng (友盟) is Beijing-based company providing the most comprehensive, multi-platform data analytics services of the mobile phone users behavior. A vast majority of Chinese mobile app development companies are Umeng’s clients. It is estimated that Umeng’s SDK is embedded inside 180’000 mobile apps in China.

Company led by former Google employee Jiang Fan was created in April 2010, and it became visible already in November 2010 when it attracted funding by Li Kaifu‘s venture capital fund Innovation Works. And more recently, in April 2013, Umeng was acquired by Alibaba for (estimated) $80M, but retained a separate brand and management structure.

So, what are exactly the services provided by this company?

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ChinaIT: Software Export to China

2014, August 7

If you are a company that is considering to market your software in China, what should you do ? Let me analyze the market and legal issues around the export of software and business development in China.

First of all, on which kind of software one could expect to make money there ?

Chinese market is especially hungry for the solutions in Smarter cities, Cloud management, and Business intelligence. Following in demand are social analytics, platform-as-a-service, internet of things and big data. As for the value of the market for this type of software, you need first to know that in this country, Continue reading “ChinaIT: Software Export to China”

ChinaIT: Deepin Linux

2014, July 22

If you are one of those who are looking for alternatives to MS Windows for personal or professional use, there is one cool Linux distribution that many Linux experts have been talking about recently. It is Chinese Deepin 2014.

Deepin 2014 was issued in July this year, and at the moment, it’s been rated as 13th on the popularity scale among about 300 commercially active distributions worldwide. Chinese company based in Wuhan has done a great job in adapting Ubuntu 14.04 and developing themselves some cool stuff, which makes the whole OS very stable, attractive and easy to use. I have installed it myself and here below is my review.

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