Dell Partners with Kingsoft as Part of $125 Billion Tech Investment in China

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This article originally appeared at The WHIR

Dell has partnered with Chinese tech giant Kingsoft to jointly launch Dell-Kingsoft Cloud as part of a $125 billion investment in China by Dell over the next five years, CEO Michael Dell announced Thursday. The company’s “In China, For China 4.0 strategy” includes the entry of Dell Ventures into the Chinese market to support entrepreneurship and growth among Chinese emerging technology enterprises.

Dell will invest in research and development and an “Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Joint-Lab” in the country, which is its second largest market after the US. Dell already employs 2,000 people in China, and is committed to sustaining a million jobs through $175 billion in imports and exports.

The “comprehensive” Kingsoft partnership and cooperation with local big data and cloud companies supports China’s national “Internet+” strategy, Dell says. Kingsoft led an investment in Chinese data center operator 21Vianet in December, which gave it access to 5,000 cabinets over three years. Following that funding boost 21Vianet announced it would operate Azure and Office 365 in China until 2018.

“The Internet is the new engine for China’s future economic growth and has unlimited potential,” said Dell. “Being an innovative and efficient technology company, Dell will embrace the principle of ‘In China, for China’ and closely integrate Dell China strategies with national policies in order to support Chinese technological innovation, economic development and industrial transformation.”

Dell also signed agreements with the Guiyang Municipal Government, China Electronics Corporation, and Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd. this year that it says will benefit the developing Chinese cloud computing industry. Combined with investments by Dell Ventures in storage, cloud computing, big data, next generation data center, mobility and security, Dell could soon be a major player in the Chinese cloud services even beyond its new offerings with Kingsoft.

Dell has also recently made gains in share of the global server market, which is largely driven by Chinese demand. The partnerships announced today may afford Dell more opportunities to satisfy that demand.

In August Dell announced a new line of business which will sell “Datacenter Scalable Solutions” to hosts and other companies as it seeks to extend its domestic enterprise customer base.

This first ran at http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/dell-partners-with-kingsoft-as-part-of-125-billion-tech-investment-in-china