More than 50 companies in the local information and communications technology (ICT) and service industries yesterday launched an alliance in a bid to grab a share of the growing cloud computing market.
Cloud computing, which means outsourcing online data storage and applications, will lower companies’ operational costs and reduce systematic risk, Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) chairman Lu Shyue-ching (呂學錦) said at the inauguration of the Taiwan Cloud Computing Consortium in Taipei.
“Cloud computing is an ongoing revolution in the information industry, “ Lu said. “It makes data management easy, cheap and time-efficient and is also energy-saving and eco-friendly.”
Lu, who heads the new consortium, said Taiwan will be able to boost the production value of its ICT industries by investing in cloud computing.
“Taiwan’s ICT hardware industry will generate an estimated production value of US$366 billion by 2020, while the ICT software industry is forecast to grow from US$20 billion in 2009 to US$50 billion in 2014,” he said.
The share of the software industry in the entire ICT industry is expected to increase from 15 percent to 25 percent during that period, Lu said.
Globally, the production value of the consumer service component of the cloud computing industry would grow from US$38.7 billion in 2008 to US$101.8 billion in 2012, representing a compound annual growth rate of 26 percent, he said, citing figures compiled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The output of business applications in the industry is projected to rise from US$59 billion in 2008 to US$213.3 billion in 2012, at a compound annual growth rate of 38 percent, Lu added.
In addition, the output of computing service in the industry would grow by a compound annual rate of 90 percent, increasing from US$3.4 billion in 2008 to US$94.5 billion in 2012, he added.
The consortium is aiming to promote three aspects of cloud computing — infrastructure, platform and software — and will also develop a platform to incorporate energy-saving technologies, Lu said.
The inaugural ceremony showcased cloud computing applications in personalized Internet TV, personal healthcare, education and video conferencing and featured a mobile data center developed by Taiwan’s Inventec Co (英業達).
The center, which looks like a container, can accommodate 576 servers and 1,200 hard drives, said Richard Lee (李詩欽), chairman of the company and deputy head of the consortium.
“It can be used by a company with up to 3,000 employees and can help save 20 percent in costs,” he added.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
RSS