Chinese Government kicks commercial companies overseas
Tom Wilkie reports on how China’s commercial supercomputer manufacturers are seeking export markets
with the support of their Government B
ig data, cloud computing, and the servers to run the internet, are all targets in an export drive by Chinese supercomputing manufacturers whose ambitions reach
far beyond China and beyond high-performance computing. In an interview with Scientific Computing
World at the ISC High Performance Conference in Frankfurt in July, Inspur was keen to promote its ‘SmartRack’ line of high-density, low-power consumption, modularised rack servers. It was, according to Xiaoyang Niu, product manager of Inspur’s server product department, the leader in the rack server market in China. Significantly, the SmartRack is oriented to massive storage and suitable for cloud resources pools and big data processing. Te company clearly sees such technology as
enabling it to expand into non-Chinese markets. Niu cited findings from the US market research company IDC highlighting the rapid growth of data centres and increased demand for servers. However, the data centre operators face major issues, he continued: power consumption; floorspace/footprint; and the problem of managing different types of servers within one data centre. ‘We are working with the Chinese internet companies to provide them with solutions which resolve all three issues,’ he said. Inspur expects to build on this domestic
expertise in reaching out to export markets with a range that includes a single rack with liquid cooling, and several designs of air cooling. ‘Because we have obtained 40 per cent of the market share of Chinese internet companies, we are going to go with them as they expand overseas,’ Niu said. Unlike Google, for example, the Chinese internet giants Alibaba and Baidu have not developed their own servers and Inspur is needed for its services as much as its hardware, he believes – although the hardware demand will be considerable: Alibaba will deploy half a million servers over the next three years. He sees Lenovo as its major competitor in the
domestic market, but overseas ‘it’s a brand new market with lots of opportunities.’
18 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD According to Niu, the company is now on
the fourth generation of SmartRack products, having started development in 2011. A distinctive feature of the design that was on display was that it has large 140mm fans which can dissipate much more heat (with less noise) under the same power consumption. Inspur claims it has a power conversion efficiency of over 94 per cent, making it more than 10 per cent lower in terms of power consumption compared to other designs.
Strategy for export expansion Inspur already has customers in 85 countries or regions and branch offices in 26 countries, together with R&D centres in the USA and Japan, as well as China. It is now seeking further expansion with a four-stranded strategy. It will be seeking local partnerships with
resellers – local channel distributors. It will be developing an OEM business, where it sells hardware but integrators and other companies add their own value and services and put their own label on the hardware. It is also aiming to extend its provision of servers for the Chinese internet companies and follow their overseas expansion. Finally, it expects support from the Chinese Government will lead to international trade deals. In addition to its own R&D centre, already
established in San Jose, Inspur plans to build a manufacturing centre in the USA for the ‘SmartRack’ products. In the USA, its focus will be on SAP, OCP, AWS, Microsoſt and other internet companies and cloud service companies. But it will also be seeking SME clients via channel sellers. Inspur has become a highly diversified
group of companies. In the summer of 2014 for example, it set up Inspur Americas in Colorado to build the company’s presence, not in commercial computers, but in providing set-top boxes and other digital home media solutions in the North and South American markets. In Europe, Inspur is particularly interested in business opportunities in Germany and Britain,
Inspur’s SmartRack product, showing the extra large fans at the rear
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