Taiwan Mobile Kicks Off Cloud Computing Investment Project

Taipei, Aug. 19, 2010 (CENS)--Taiwan Mobile Corp. will begin to construct its first Internet Data Center (IDC) facility by the end of this year, marking the outset of its five-year cloud computing investment project.

According to the company's chief operation officer of enterprise business group, George Chou, the first IDC facility will be built in Taipei City or Xinbei City (upgraded from Taipei County).

Industry executives estimated the facility, including the building, land, cloud-computing equipment, and electric control room, to cost the telecom-service provider over NT$5 billion (US$156 million at US$1:NT$32) although the company said it is still assessing how much it will actually have to spend on the project.

Report has it that the Executive Yuan, Taiwan's Cabinet, is in talks with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. and Taiwan Mobile over jointly pushing for establishment of flagship company of cloud computing. In response, Taiwan Mobile executives said the company will certainly work with cloud-computing enterprises on its IDC project although it has yet to decide whom it will work with.

So far, Quanta Computer, Inventec and Wistron have been among Taiwan's most aggressive electronics manufacturers to push cloud-computing projects.

Taiwan Mobile has recently co-introduced an information-security service with Cisco Systems as the first step of its cloud-computing service.

Taiwan Mobile's nearest rivals at home-Chunghwa Telecom and Far EasTone Telecom-are also vigorously materializing their IDC projects. Chunghwa sets to invest NT$44 billion (US$1.3 billion) to build an IDC in Yangmei City in northern Taiwan and NT$15 billion (US$468 million) to build another in Taipei County.

Far EasTone plans to construct its flagship IDC in Taipei County and seven centers throughout the island.