For years, China has lagged while the rest of the world raced to embrace cloud computing.
Wasteful investments, hodgepodge standards, and a regulatory regime
hostile to foreign players have hindered widespread adoption of the
technology, which in America now powers everything from Google Drive to
iTunes and DropBox.
But this year, things have finally started to change.
In February, Microsoft announced it would partner with 21Vianet, a
local company, to sell cloud services to Chinese consumers, making it
the first major foreign player to break into China’s domestic market.