Development of 5G fueling cloud companies: industry veteran

The development of 5G technology is fueling fresh business momentum for cloud computing software companies in China, according to an industry veteran at cloud infrastructure company Nutanix.

"Apparently the speeds and feeds are pushing more data out of the edge," said Matt Young, Nutanix's senior vice-president of sales for Asia Pacific and Japan.

"Once you have more data, you have to process it, and naturally (you will) need the infrastructure that can deal with it. So we are seeing a great opportunity that's going to be beneficial for everyone," he said.

He made the remarks as the United States-headquartered company has just collaborated with Chinese server-maker Inspur on a new offering, which supports all enterprise-level applications and is compatible with both private and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

He said China has leapfrogged a number of countries, and the sheer number of companies in the country is driving people to think about cloud-based solutions. More enterprises are moving their traditional IT infrastructure to the cloud in a bid to enhance efficiency and agility, using emerging technologies, he said.

The new all-in-one system produced in partnership with Inspur "is ideal for helping drive this transition and satisfying the next generation infrastructure requirements of local enterprises", Young said.

"5G promises that you will have a big pipe, so you will be expecting a lot more applications being developed by various industries," he said.

"What people need is a seamless connection between on-premises data centers and what they have on public cloud servers, giving enterprises the elasticity and ease of being able to scale up."

Young also mentioned the huge potential of Chinese cloud computing firms like Alibaba Cloud, which are actively branching out overseas and setting up data centers across the globe.

"Chinese enterprises are so large that the (cloud companies') ability to move with them and take them outside China is beneficial," he said.