Cloud makes a world of difference

Want to visit a fortune teller? There is a digital one at the ongoing 16th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo.

"By inputting the name of your micro blog, the cloud terminal can read your micro blog and immediately figure out your personality, hobbies, habits, personal relationships and popularity," said Lei Tao, CEO of Skycloud.

This is the third time Beijing Cloud Valley, a cloud computing base hosting Lei's and another 21 cloud computing companies, is taking part in the expo.

"We mainly displayed hardware like cloud servers before. But this time, we are giving more priority to applications," said Zhao Anjian, president of Cloud Valley.

Apart from being a "fortune teller", the cloud computing technology can also serve as a virtual teaching assistant, detective and accountant.

The technology can help teachers better prepare their lectures by getting a better understanding of what their students want to know.

"Students can use mobile phones to take pictures of the parts of their homework that they don't understand, and send the pictures to the cloud.

"Teachers will get a list of these parts, helping them prepare for the next day's work," Lei said.

Cloud applications are becoming a part of everyday life.

Worried about missing the bus, people may choose to forgo breakfast.

However, with cloud technology, people can know how long it will take for the bus to arrive.

According to a report published by Internet Data Center, global data volume is around 1.2 billion gigabytes in 2010 and will reach 35 zettabytes in 2020, with an annual growth rate of 40 percent.

Lei said cloud technologies have huge potential in China given its massive population.

"The large population makes the volume of data, in China, which mainly consists of people's behavioral data and Internet data, extremely big," he said.

"This provides a base for the development of the industry," Lei said.

Cloud Valley in Beijing was founded in 2010 with seven companies and several-dozen employees.

It now has more than 1,000 employees working for 22 companies that cover all major segments of cloud computing technology and products.