By Su Bin, Chen Junyi, People’s Daily

A new batch of data centers, power centers and dispatching centers were recently built at the Guizhou Information Park of China Telecom Cloud Computing in Gui’an New Area, southwest China’s Guizhou Province.

It marked the almost completion of a new phase of a telecommunication data center in the park, which is expected bring at least 70,000 new servers into use.

According to Wu Kaiming, general manager of the operation center of the Guizhou Information Park, the park now comprises eight data centers with a total of 200,000 server racks, and its annual output exceeds 200 million yuan ($28.14 million).

In 2014, the development of the big data industry was elevated to a provincial-level strategy in Guizhou province. Over the past nearly decade, 11 super-large data centers have been established in the province by Huawei, Tencent, China Telecom and other tech and communication giants, and 23 key data centers have been put into use or are under construction.

As one of the eight approved national hub nodes for the development of an integrated computing power network, Guizhou is accelerating the development of a national computing power and algorithm supporting base, turning data into resources and ensuring that data are well stored and utilized.

Wu told People’s Daily that Guizhou, located in the karst mountain region, enjoys a safe and stable geological environment, where the air is always fresh and cool, with summer temperature averaging 24 degrees Celsius. Besides, the province also boasts rich power resources and a relevantly cheaper electricity price, Wu added.

Compared with other regions, the province enjoys advantages in geography, climate and energy, given that data centers are a big consumer of energy, he noted.

Last July, Guizhou province launched a campaign to build stronger clusters of data centers in the Gui’an New Area, said Hu Jianhua, an official with the Big Data Development Administration of Guizhou Province. According to the man, the Gui’an New Area is expected to boast 4 million servers as of 2025 and the total output of data centers in the area will hit 100 billion yuan.

Computing power is productivity in the era of digital economy. Since China launched an “east data, west computing” project, Guizhou province has worked vigorously to improve the operational models and demand-supply matchmaking of computing services.

The province now plays an important part in the post-production rendering of more and more films.

Zhongyun is a big data service company in Guizhou, which moves traditional digital production systems to the cloud via cluster and distributed computing. With its self-developed cloud service platform and computing platform, the company has reduced the time of rendering for big-screen films from over 100 hours to just minutes.

“The company can utilize over 10,000 compute nodes and offer computing services for more than 10,000 enterprises and studios in film and animation production, promoting digital and intelligent transformation of traditional cultural industries,” said an executive of the company.

In May last year, the Guizhou dispatching platform of a national integrated computing power network was officially launched. The platform, matching the supply and demand sides of computing power and enterprises in the data industry, aims at efficient cross-region, cross-industry and cross-platform dispatching of computing power.

Recently, a computing resource zone was opened in the Global Big Data Exchange in Guiyang to nurture the market of data and computing power trading.

The computing resource zone will commercialize and standardize computing power, realize cross-regional dispatching and coordination of computing power, match the supply with the demand of computing power in a targeted manner in east China, promote in-depth integration of computing power and data, and accelerate the exploration of new business forms and models of digital economy, said Ye Yuting, general manager of the Global Big Data Exchange in Guiyang.

Nianhua Data Technology Co., Ltd. is one of the first tech firms in Guizhou dedicated to the development of software technology and services. Over recent years, the company has grasped the opportunity brought about by big data development and launched a data development and governance platform that offers big data services for clients and releases the value of data.

According to vice general manager of the company Wang Gang, the company serves clients in 10 provinces. It is expected to see revenue of 150 million yuan this year and register growth for a sixth consecutive year. Wang said.

The revenue of Guizhou’s software and information technology sector jumped 90.5 percent year-on-year in 2022, 6.5 times of that in 2015, said Hu. The province is home to more than 260 software and information technology firms above the designated size, and a featured digital industry cluster has taken shape, Hu added.

According to him, 84,300 5G base stations have been built in Guizhou, and the province is building itself into a major hub of computing services as a campaign to accelerate the transmission of computing power has kicked off.