Cloud Expo Asia Hong Kong - report from the largest IT exhibition in Asia
The Cloud Expo Asia Exhibition and Conference Hong Kong combines four directions - clouds, cloud security, the Internet of Things and data centers. Asia always has its own special solution for any task, and the temptation to look at the Chinese “road to the clouds” was so great that even ten hours of flight were spent in a pleasant anticipation of exploring the brave new world.
In Eastern culture, there is the image of three monkeys - sanzaru, covering their eyes, ears and mouth in order not to see evil, not to hear anything bad and not to talk about evil. It is believed that in this case the person himself will be protected from evil. The Western interpretation does not focus on the person himself, but on the world around him, so in the Old and New World monkeys often become a symbol of evil. After all, not seeing, not hearing and not reacting to it, they contribute to its spread. We see the same object, but depending on the level of immersion in the context, interpretations of its meaning can be completely different. Therefore, in order for this article to be interesting and useful, I, unlike sanzar, had to actively use all that monkeys cover on each of the statuettes — sight, hearing and speech — for two days of the conference. And that's what came out of it.
The event was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center (HKCEC) in the island part of the city. Feels like the area occupied by the exhibition part was comparable to the last two or three Infosecurity Russia or half of one of the halls of the Moscone Center, in which the RSA is held in San Francisco. Within the framework of the conference, four areas were collected at one site - Cloud, Cloud Security, Smart IoT and DataCentre. Almost half of the total space was allocated to DataCentre World. It was the realm of server racks, fiber optic communication systems, rack servers, telecommunications equipment - in short, everything without which it is impossible to imagine the construction of data centers. The Cloud and Cloud Security sections occupied approximately the same half of the exhibition, only 14 out of more than 100 stands remained on the Smart IoT.
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Microsoft, HGC (Hutchinson Global Communications), Chinese telecom and cloud providers Chinac, Alibaba Cloud, China Telecom occupied the most advantageous places (first line) with the largest and brightest stands. Comparing this fact with the fact that almost half of the exhibition was occupied by “iron”, it can be assumed that for the China-Hong Kong zone “clouds” are, first of all, data centers and private and hybrid cloud services sold from them.
When I looked at the exposition, I had the impression that China was struggling to get through the bottleneck of Hong Kong to the APAC region, and I would rather agree that they succeed. This applies to both large telecom providers (for example, RedTone) and large commercial companies, such as AlibabaCloud. The latter in general have become for me one of the unexpected discoveries at this exhibition.
The overwhelming majority of my colleagues and acquaintances, Alibaba is known only as an online store of goods of Chinese origin and of different quality. Meanwhile, the Alibaba Cloud division, also widely known in narrow circles as Aliyun, has its data centers not only in China, but also in the United States, Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong. The next DC opens in 2017 in Malaysia. In them, they provide both IaaS services and PaaS with a focus on the DBMS based on their Apsara relational. Well, the final touch was that Alibaba Cloud became the official supplier of cloud infrastructure for the Olympic Games and the e-commerce platform until 2028.
Now the main providers of cloud services (mostly IaaS and PaaS) in the APAC region are the giants Microsoft, AWS, Google, and IBM, which is coming to their heels. But a Chinese Atlanta named Ali is spreading his shoulders high and wide in the clouds and is already sitting next to Microsoft in the Keynote-theater at the exhibition Cloud Expo Asia, the main sponsor of which is.
When I began to study the lists of speakers at the conference, I realized that I could not escape the fate of the second monkey. 14 theaters in which performances are constantly going on, just did not leave me a chance to hear absolutely everything. In the end, I focused on the audiences of the Cloud Security Alliance, Cloud Innovations, Services & Applications, Service Providers & Cloud Ecosystems - Technology & Business & DevOps and the main Keynote Theater. Performances were held every thirty minutes, so at least once an hour I had to make a tough choice between an interesting and even more interesting topic. Stories from representatives of the Cloud Security Alliance confirmed my hypothesis that the main thing in the clouds in Asia is their earthiness.
The state and a very large business become interested in cloud technologies when they begin to convert to physically built data centers, people working in the data center, and other investments in the country's economy. The cloud service providers Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not enough to meet the needs of the market, and “local” data centers are taking the stage, but not with co-location services, but with flexible rates for leased computing power.
One of the areas of activity of the Cloud Security Alliance is the preparation of reports on the degree of readiness of countries to actively use cloud technologies. The assessment is based on the availability of production resources for the construction of data centers (human, energy, production, political, etc.) and financial. The second factor takes into account the cost of owning physical computing systems, the general standard of living in the country, the difference between the cost of renting cloud resources and the acquisition / lease of its own servers and information systems. Political risks, natural threats such as earthquakes and tsunamis are also taken into account when compiling the readiness index. The exhibition showed a report in which Japan and Singapore were in the first place in terms of aggregate evaluation. Both in one and in the second regions there is a big shortage of space, high cost of living and qualified professionals, and therefore the cost of owning IT assets. They are invited to display in the clouds, thereby reducing customer costs.
Under this spicy and fragrant sauce, 90% of all presentations at the conference took place. From the scenes there were noisy statements about the repeated decrease in the expenses of companies during the transition to the cloud infrastructure. Projectors were showing slide after slide pictures from an already happy present and an even happier future. Vendors juggled with brands that have already completed the transition - and were mentioned such giants as Capital One, Suncorp, DBS, but from the halls of the statement "we are already in the clouds, and we like everything there" did not sound. What is interesting, I did not see a single question or comment from the hall for two days of work at the exhibition. Full audiences (most of them were filled at least 50%) happily applauded the speakers and ran away to collect new portions of souvenirs from exhibition stands. People dreamed of clouds and fled back to such a familiar, solid and inspiring confidence and peace of earth.
The most interesting thing at conferences is communication. And from personal experience this part of the program takes the most time. There is nothing better than a short interview in order to quickly and efficiently get answers to your questions. Of course, there is still scopolamine, but its application in the framework of the conference is somewhat difficult. However, he would not need it there. People willingly shared information and experience, gave advice and told interesting details about events that only echoes reach our cold lands.
Colleagues from the professional association of information security experts PISA enthusiastically talked about the attack on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. At a time when Russian banks were subjected to the next wave of targeted attacks, in Hong Kong, the attackers aimed at mobile devices on which application-exchange clients were installed. By exploiting vulnerabilities in the application code, attackers were able to carry out stock operations on behalf of the real owners. The financial and reputational damage from the attack was of such magnitude that with the active participation of PISA, a large-scale audit of more than 30 applications working with the Hong Kong Stock Trading Market was conducted. Colleagues promised that the results of the research will appear in the public domain in July of this year.
It was interesting to hear from representatives of companies involved in information security services (SOC / MDR / MSSP) to confirm their own assumptions and hypotheses related to the MSSP market in Asia. Of the three components that are outsourced to any MSSP / SOC (technology, processes, professionals), in Asia there is a strong shortage of the third - qualified information and cyber security specialists. And if the formation of the first line seems to be a more or less elevating task, then the specialists of the second line need to either be transported to the region, or long and expensive to learn. The general opinion of the western colleagues in the shop is that serious investments are needed in the region not only in iron, but also in the creation of a blue-collar reservoir that can serve in the SOCa team professionally.
This monkey sometimes joins sanzar, but more often than not the monkeys are threesomes. There is a version that due to the fact that Shizaru covers his stomach or groin, she became unloved in the religious Old World. On the other hand, the trinity can remain a trinity because the number 4 in Asian culture is considered unhappy. Anyway, Shizaru, who actively advocates not doing evil, herself became his victim, a victim of ignorance, assumptions and stereotypes. The only way not to make her mistakes is to collect knowledge, take into account everything that we see, hear and feel, and only then our decisions will be correct and timely.
I remember Hong Kong because it combines seemingly incompatible things. The houses of glass and steel are side by side with green parks and picturesque mountain slopes. Noise from double-decker buses and trams becomes indistinguishable among the murmur of water jets in the zoological garden.
The horrendous building density is adjacent to the trees with exceptional attention, each of which in Hong Kong is provided with a sign with an individual number and is protected by law.
To take a leading position in the economy of the region and become a conductor of Asian culture in the Western world turned out to be in this city-state. Attention to detail in business and in relation to nature is, it seems to me, the spring that allowed the Chinese dragon to turn around and fly out of the stone jungle at Victoria Bay. And it is this dragon that now flies into the clouds, and so high and fast that the shadow of its wings opens far beyond the borders of the APAC region.
In Eastern culture, there is the image of three monkeys - sanzaru, covering their eyes, ears and mouth in order not to see evil, not to hear anything bad and not to talk about evil. It is believed that in this case the person himself will be protected from evil. The Western interpretation does not focus on the person himself, but on the world around him, so in the Old and New World monkeys often become a symbol of evil. After all, not seeing, not hearing and not reacting to it, they contribute to its spread. We see the same object, but depending on the level of immersion in the context, interpretations of its meaning can be completely different. Therefore, in order for this article to be interesting and useful, I, unlike sanzar, had to actively use all that monkeys cover on each of the statuettes — sight, hearing and speech — for two days of the conference. And that's what came out of it.
Mizaru (見 ざ る) - does not see
The event was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center (HKCEC) in the island part of the city. Feels like the area occupied by the exhibition part was comparable to the last two or three Infosecurity Russia or half of one of the halls of the Moscone Center, in which the RSA is held in San Francisco. Within the framework of the conference, four areas were collected at one site - Cloud, Cloud Security, Smart IoT and DataCentre. Almost half of the total space was allocated to DataCentre World. It was the realm of server racks, fiber optic communication systems, rack servers, telecommunications equipment - in short, everything without which it is impossible to imagine the construction of data centers. The Cloud and Cloud Security sections occupied approximately the same half of the exhibition, only 14 out of more than 100 stands remained on the Smart IoT.
')
Microsoft, HGC (Hutchinson Global Communications), Chinese telecom and cloud providers Chinac, Alibaba Cloud, China Telecom occupied the most advantageous places (first line) with the largest and brightest stands. Comparing this fact with the fact that almost half of the exhibition was occupied by “iron”, it can be assumed that for the China-Hong Kong zone “clouds” are, first of all, data centers and private and hybrid cloud services sold from them.
When I looked at the exposition, I had the impression that China was struggling to get through the bottleneck of Hong Kong to the APAC region, and I would rather agree that they succeed. This applies to both large telecom providers (for example, RedTone) and large commercial companies, such as AlibabaCloud. The latter in general have become for me one of the unexpected discoveries at this exhibition.
The overwhelming majority of my colleagues and acquaintances, Alibaba is known only as an online store of goods of Chinese origin and of different quality. Meanwhile, the Alibaba Cloud division, also widely known in narrow circles as Aliyun, has its data centers not only in China, but also in the United States, Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong. The next DC opens in 2017 in Malaysia. In them, they provide both IaaS services and PaaS with a focus on the DBMS based on their Apsara relational. Well, the final touch was that Alibaba Cloud became the official supplier of cloud infrastructure for the Olympic Games and the e-commerce platform until 2028.
Now the main providers of cloud services (mostly IaaS and PaaS) in the APAC region are the giants Microsoft, AWS, Google, and IBM, which is coming to their heels. But a Chinese Atlanta named Ali is spreading his shoulders high and wide in the clouds and is already sitting next to Microsoft in the Keynote-theater at the exhibition Cloud Expo Asia, the main sponsor of which is.
Kikazaru (聞 か ざ る) - does not hear
When I began to study the lists of speakers at the conference, I realized that I could not escape the fate of the second monkey. 14 theaters in which performances are constantly going on, just did not leave me a chance to hear absolutely everything. In the end, I focused on the audiences of the Cloud Security Alliance, Cloud Innovations, Services & Applications, Service Providers & Cloud Ecosystems - Technology & Business & DevOps and the main Keynote Theater. Performances were held every thirty minutes, so at least once an hour I had to make a tough choice between an interesting and even more interesting topic. Stories from representatives of the Cloud Security Alliance confirmed my hypothesis that the main thing in the clouds in Asia is their earthiness.
The state and a very large business become interested in cloud technologies when they begin to convert to physically built data centers, people working in the data center, and other investments in the country's economy. The cloud service providers Microsoft, Amazon and Google are not enough to meet the needs of the market, and “local” data centers are taking the stage, but not with co-location services, but with flexible rates for leased computing power.
One of the areas of activity of the Cloud Security Alliance is the preparation of reports on the degree of readiness of countries to actively use cloud technologies. The assessment is based on the availability of production resources for the construction of data centers (human, energy, production, political, etc.) and financial. The second factor takes into account the cost of owning physical computing systems, the general standard of living in the country, the difference between the cost of renting cloud resources and the acquisition / lease of its own servers and information systems. Political risks, natural threats such as earthquakes and tsunamis are also taken into account when compiling the readiness index. The exhibition showed a report in which Japan and Singapore were in the first place in terms of aggregate evaluation. Both in one and in the second regions there is a big shortage of space, high cost of living and qualified professionals, and therefore the cost of owning IT assets. They are invited to display in the clouds, thereby reducing customer costs.
Under this spicy and fragrant sauce, 90% of all presentations at the conference took place. From the scenes there were noisy statements about the repeated decrease in the expenses of companies during the transition to the cloud infrastructure. Projectors were showing slide after slide pictures from an already happy present and an even happier future. Vendors juggled with brands that have already completed the transition - and were mentioned such giants as Capital One, Suncorp, DBS, but from the halls of the statement "we are already in the clouds, and we like everything there" did not sound. What is interesting, I did not see a single question or comment from the hall for two days of work at the exhibition. Full audiences (most of them were filled at least 50%) happily applauded the speakers and ran away to collect new portions of souvenirs from exhibition stands. People dreamed of clouds and fled back to such a familiar, solid and inspiring confidence and peace of earth.
Ivadzaru (言 わ ざ る) - does not speak
The most interesting thing at conferences is communication. And from personal experience this part of the program takes the most time. There is nothing better than a short interview in order to quickly and efficiently get answers to your questions. Of course, there is still scopolamine, but its application in the framework of the conference is somewhat difficult. However, he would not need it there. People willingly shared information and experience, gave advice and told interesting details about events that only echoes reach our cold lands.
Colleagues from the professional association of information security experts PISA enthusiastically talked about the attack on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. At a time when Russian banks were subjected to the next wave of targeted attacks, in Hong Kong, the attackers aimed at mobile devices on which application-exchange clients were installed. By exploiting vulnerabilities in the application code, attackers were able to carry out stock operations on behalf of the real owners. The financial and reputational damage from the attack was of such magnitude that with the active participation of PISA, a large-scale audit of more than 30 applications working with the Hong Kong Stock Trading Market was conducted. Colleagues promised that the results of the research will appear in the public domain in July of this year.
It was interesting to hear from representatives of companies involved in information security services (SOC / MDR / MSSP) to confirm their own assumptions and hypotheses related to the MSSP market in Asia. Of the three components that are outsourced to any MSSP / SOC (technology, processes, professionals), in Asia there is a strong shortage of the third - qualified information and cyber security specialists. And if the formation of the first line seems to be a more or less elevating task, then the specialists of the second line need to either be transported to the region, or long and expensive to learn. The general opinion of the western colleagues in the shop is that serious investments are needed in the region not only in iron, but also in the creation of a blue-collar reservoir that can serve in the SOCa team professionally.
Shizaru (し ざ る) - no evil
This monkey sometimes joins sanzar, but more often than not the monkeys are threesomes. There is a version that due to the fact that Shizaru covers his stomach or groin, she became unloved in the religious Old World. On the other hand, the trinity can remain a trinity because the number 4 in Asian culture is considered unhappy. Anyway, Shizaru, who actively advocates not doing evil, herself became his victim, a victim of ignorance, assumptions and stereotypes. The only way not to make her mistakes is to collect knowledge, take into account everything that we see, hear and feel, and only then our decisions will be correct and timely.
I remember Hong Kong because it combines seemingly incompatible things. The houses of glass and steel are side by side with green parks and picturesque mountain slopes. Noise from double-decker buses and trams becomes indistinguishable among the murmur of water jets in the zoological garden.
The horrendous building density is adjacent to the trees with exceptional attention, each of which in Hong Kong is provided with a sign with an individual number and is protected by law.
To take a leading position in the economy of the region and become a conductor of Asian culture in the Western world turned out to be in this city-state. Attention to detail in business and in relation to nature is, it seems to me, the spring that allowed the Chinese dragon to turn around and fly out of the stone jungle at Victoria Bay. And it is this dragon that now flies into the clouds, and so high and fast that the shadow of its wings opens far beyond the borders of the APAC region.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/330916/
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