Guizhou Information Park, as one of the China Telecom’s Cloud Computing base, is about 2,200 km far away from Beijing, which takes about 10 hours by high-speed rail, but only needs less than 20 milliseconds to finish the transmission through the “expressway network" driven by computing power backed on cloud-network integration. At the fingertips, on the screen, at the bottom layer with massive data surging, and in the increasingly intelligent and digitized era, the invisible "cloud" is being integrated into the visible life with unimaginable speed and breadth, becoming the cornerstone of the economic and social digital transformation. Building "cloud" has also become the focus of competition among countries under the historical background of the world caught between a pandemic of the century and momentous changes never seen in the last one hundred years. In 2022, the Chinese government proposed to build a “National Cloud" and once again took a key step towards becoming a cyber power.

Build National Cloud to Strengthen National Power

Just as the electricity that drives machines is the foundation of the industrial economy, the cloud that carries data storage and computing is the foundation of the digital economy. The concept of cloud computing came out in 2006, which first became the transformation target of IT enterprises around the globe, and then evolved into the strategic deployment of more and more countries. Since the US released the "DoD Cloud Strategy" in 2012, Russia, India and France have successively launched the “National Cloud" strategy. The Japanese government has included cloud services into the list of "Specific Important Materials” and urged the localization of cloud services. The rivalry over the cloud computing powers is intensifying.

In China, the Party and the government are very sensitive to the historical opportunities of informationization development, and have always attached great importance to the construction of a cyber power. The development level of cloud computing is among the highest in the world. According to the China Internet Development Report (2022), China's cloud computing was in a rapid development stage in 2021, with a market size of CNY 322.9 billion. Cloud computing, as the fundamental architecture of New Infrastructure including big data center, artificial intelligence and industrial Internet, is regarded as the first priority of the national key investment and construction, and sped up in implementation across provinces and cities. In October 2021, when presiding over the 34th collective learning of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed that "we should speed up the construction of New Infrastructure, strengthen the strategic layout, and accelerate the building of an intelligent and comprehensive digital information infrastructure that is speedy, ubiquitous, space-air-ground integrated, cloud-network integrated, smart and agile, green and low carbon, and secure and controllable”, which marked that cloud-network integration has officially become an important part of China's digital information infrastructure construction. On July 12, 2022, the SASAC of the State Council convened a conference to further the specialized integration of state-owned central enterprises, which required China Telecom to introduce several strategic investors of central enterprises to build the “National Cloud".  On July 24, 2022, the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administrative Cloud was officially launched at the 5th Digital China Summit - Cloud Ecosystem Conference. Weng Jieming, deputy director of the SASAC, proposed at the conference: “the state-owned central enterprises should be steadfast in serving as the operator of the national basic public cloud, constructing digital infrastructure, and building a national-level basic public cloud platform that is open, coordinated, green and secure, independent and controllable and highly efficient and available."

“National Cloud" is developing under the specific guidance of national policies. China Telecom has actively implemented the major deployment of the Party and the state, fulfilled the working requirements for state-owned central enterprises to participate in the construction of the national cloud system, and unhesitatingly assumed the responsibility of leading the layout, construction and development of the “National Cloud" based on the eSurfing Cloud.

Arduously Building National Cloud for Ten Years

As the builders of computing power infrastructure and backbone transmission network, telecommunication operators are also the main force in the construction of cloud. Wu Hequan, a well-known information and communication network expert in China and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), told the reporter of the People's Posts and Telecommunications Paper that the operators have the abilities to effectively integrate the network and cloud computing power by utilizing their network resources and operating experience. Compared with third-party data center businesses, telecommunication operators can distinctively demonstrate their advantages in the construction and operation of computing power networks in the era of computing power.

China Telecom has been on the "fast track" of cloud computing development for ten years; In 2012, China Telecom established its cloud computing branch; In 2016, China Telecom proposed to develop cloud-network integration for the first time, and was also the first telecom operator in the world to present such development concept;In 2018, China Telecom released the industry's first white paper on cloud-network integration; In 2020, China Telecom put forward the strategy of Cloudification & Digital Transformation, and took the lead in releasing the "Technology White Paper 2030 on Cloud-Network Integration".

Through ten years of exploration and cultivation, from the early commercial system to the foreign OpenStack open source system, and then to the transition from open source to the combination of open source and self-developed system, and until the end of 2021 when the Phase 4.0 was announced, China Telecom had completely reconstructed the self-developed system and realized the features of one cloud with multiple forms, one cloud with multiple chips, one cloud network, consistent architecture, unified scheduling and unified operation and maintenance. eSurfing Cloud has thoroughly reshaped itself and become the world's largest operator cloud, ranking among the top players in China's public cloud market and the first in China's government cloud market.

After ten years of cloud building, China Telecom has deepened its understanding of cloud-network integration. Wei Leping, executive deputy director of the Communications Science and Technology Committee of MIIT and director of the Science and Technology Committee of China Telecom, said in an interview with the People's Posts and Telecommunications Paper: "China Telecom's scientific and technological innovation is mainly oriented to the Cloudification & Digital Transformation where cloud-network integration is the intention of the technologies. China Telecom's cloud-network integration policy of ‘network as the foundation, cloud as the core, network following cloud, integration of cloud and network, green and low-carbon, secure and controllable’ fully accord with the country's strategic intention. "

As of June 2022, the cloud computing industry layout of China Telecom saw a coverage of "one pool for one city” across more than 160 cities, with an overall computing power of 3.1EFLOPS (31 quintillion floating-point operations per second), and a "2 + 4 + 31 + X + O" cloud-network resource integration arrangement. In particular, "2" refers to the construction of 2 data centers in Inner Mongolia and Guizhou; "4" refers to the construction of central clouds in F4 key regions, namely Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, and Sichuan-Shanxi-Chongqing. "31" refers to the distribution of regional clouds in upper-tier cities in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central; "X" is to push forward the edge cloud to cover more than 300 lower-tier cities according to the standard of "one pool for one city"; "O" is to deploy nodes in countries involved in "Belt and Road Initiative", extending the computing power system overseas.

On August 3, 2022, the People's Daily published an article praising eSurfing Cloud for "further enhancing the capability of scientific and technological innovation" and pointed out that "eSurfing Cloud has basically taken shape as the framework of the National Cloud". China Telecom adheres to cloud-network integration driven development, practice and scientific and technological innovation, and has made great contributions to the unobstructed information artery for national economic and social development.

Build National Cloud with Chinese Characteristics

The report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China defined the tasks of "accelerating the construction of a cyber power and a digital China" and "speeding up the development of the digital economy and promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy", which pointed out the way forward and provided a fundamental guidance for every aspect of building the “National Cloud".

“National Cloud" paves the way to a cyber power, serves as the infrastructure of digital China and underlies the digital economy. In 2022, the senior management of China Telecom said on several occasions that in the process of building the “National Cloud", they would follow the new development concept by adhering to the people-oriented development, the shared development of industrial chains, the green and low-carbon development, and the secure and controllable development, thus to build a “National Cloud" development model with Chinese characteristics.

It is the fundamental requirements for the "National Cloud" to make technology breakthroughs and realize the independent and controllable core technologies. China Telecom is determined to build a science and technology-driven enterprise, speed up the formation of a “source" of original technologies, and play a leading role in the modern industrial chain of cloud computing and big data, which can be manifested by the facts that it has successively broken through a series of key core technologies such as distributed database, cloud operating system, E-HPC, OOS, cloud network, CDN, etc., with a full-stack cloud capability that is independent and controllable, secure and trustworthy, open and cooperative, and first-class in the industry; it put forward the concept of Computing Power Network for the first time in the industry, and formulated the standard framework of Computing Power Network; and it focuses on the localization process of key chips and devices in upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and strengthens joint research and development with state-owned central enterprises such as China Electronics and well-known universities such as Tsinghua University to build an independent and controllable cloud original technology ecosystem, thus gradually reducing our dependence on foreign products.

Empowering high-quality economic and social development and meeting people's new demands for digital life are the main objectives of the "National Cloud". China Telecom has always adhered to the people-centered development concept, actively constructed the service appraisal system of "customers have the final say" and involved itself into all aspects of digital China construction by providing a stable, secure and reliable GovCloud and a public service cloud for the government and a dedicated cloud resource pool with a unified technology base for state-owned central enterprises, building various industry cloud platforms together with leading enterprises, and vigorously promoting thousands of industries to access the cloud and acquire intellectual power with data so as to release new energy of digital development; providing diversified, high-performance and easy-to-migrate public-private hybrid cloud services for various types of enterprises to promote the digital transformation; and providing the public with convenient cloud services, including smart homes, smart communities and digital villages, to meet the digital needs of thousands of households.

Building a new digital security barrier to from a new security pattern and safeguard the new development pattern is the key task of the "National Cloud". China Telecom has independently developed cloud network security management platform and other key core technologies, actively built a security capability pool covering the cloud-network-edge-terminal in 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central, realizes order-as-per-use and elastic deployment of security capabilities, and continuously improve the end-to-end security system of the enterprise cloud network; China Telecom introduces its “DamDDoS”, a security service product with global coverage against network attacks, into eSurfing Cloud, achieving the annual defense against 330,000 large-scale network attacks, disposing of 282,000 phishing sites, and recovering huge economic losses worth hundreds of millions of yuan.

As a national team of cloud services, China Telecom actively plays its part in the national strategy by accelerating the construction to increase computing power at a compound rate of over 80% per annum, with an estimated 16.3EFLOPS by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan. eSurfing Cloud will strive to attain its goal to build a national cloud to strengthen national power and create a strong base for the digital economy era, allowing the real economy and people’s life to ride on the “cloud” for better development.