NTU teams up with Delta Electronics to build the first comprehensive cloud computing environment in Taiwan's academia

The global leader in power management----Delta Electronics, jointly announced with National Taiwan University on June 20th that they will form an alliance to promote the academic applications and personnel training of cloud computing. Delta Electronics, for its part, will provide basic equipments and services of 200 million N.T. dollars worth to NTU’s College of Management, and it will team up with the College to set up cloud computing business courses with a view toward cultivating diverse talents in cloud computing. This collaboration will make NTU become the first university in the world to have a School of Management based on the technologies of cloud computing, and establish the first precedent of any School of Management offering courses in cloud computing applications.

President Si-Chen Lee of our university said: “Cloud computing is the largest commercial revolution since the invention of the internet. This new technology will transform Taiwan’s communication industry from one that is based on hardware development to one that provides software development and system solutions. At present talents in cloud computing are still few and far between in Taiwan, so we team up with Delta Electronics in the hope that through their superior energy saving technology and industrial base, we can foster more cloud computing elites for our country, and expedite the innovations in the business models of cloud computing, so that Taiwan will occupy a leading position in the world in this area. ” Bruce Cheng, the Chairman of Delta Electronics, replied by saying: “The reason we cooperated with National Taiwan University’s College of Management is that we hope that we can let the cloud computing technology take root in Taiwan’s academic institutions. We rely upon NTU’s excellent teaching and academic research to upgrade our domestic cloud computing energy and to cultivate more cloud computing professionals, while at the same time fulfilling our corporate social responsibilities which we have always insisted upon. We regard our cooperation with NTU as a starting point for the creation of a comprehensive cloud computing environment, and we hope it will lead to new initiatives in industry/academia co-operations.”

The schools in our nation really have no less need for a cloud computing environment than our industries. Recognizing this developing trend, Delta Electronics specifically provides software and hardware technologies to help National Taiwan University’s College of Management build the first academic clouding environment in our nation. Ever since its inception, faculty and students can conduct academic researches or learn any courses anytime, anywhere. In the past, the number of computers and budget in our internet data center were quite limited; but in the future, with the establishment of a comprehensive cloud computing environment, our faculty and students will no longer be constrained by time and material resources and can enjoy flexible and reliable cloud computing at anytime and anywhere. The comprehensive academic cloud will not only change the daily operations and management of our College of Management, but also allow our faculty and students to interact with one another in a brand new manner, and gradually cut down the use of paper. One day, the College of Management will arrive at a paperless state. Following its involvement in cloud computing and the establishment of “cloud technology center” in 2010, Delta Electronics self developed an energy-saving “cloud data center” which it used as a far-end backup for the comprehensive academic cloud, including container type and non container type modular designs. When the computers in campus overload in their capacities, the computers will link up to the far end data center through the internet, so the users can enjoy the computation totally uninterrupted. The special features of the container type data center of Delta Electronics lie in its overall energy -saving design which maximizes its energy efficiency. The power usage effectiveness (PUE) value of the data center is only 1.25, meaning that the power consumption of the data center is only 1.25 times the power consumption of regular IT equipments, well below the standard value of 2.0 in the U.S. and Europe, and ever lower than the standard value of 1.5 in Leed’s Green Data Center, showing high overall energy efficiency. Additionally, compared with normal data centers, Delta Electronics’ container type cloud data center saves millions of N.T. dollars in electricity bills every year, as it packs the traditional computing resources into a 20-foot container, thus allowing enterprise to build a more flexible data center with lower cost and higher efficiencies.

Another pioneering creation of this collaboration is the establishment of commercial application courses based on the innovation of the business models of cloud computing. These new courses are offered by the College of Management and fully funded by Delta Electronics. The rationale behind the establishment of these courses is to cultivate diverse talents in business development and management of cloud computing while emphasizing the learning of practical skills. Students who enroll in these classes will be able to show their creativity in learning to invent more pluralistic cloud computing applications and services. The College of Management offers special curriculum to allow students to intern at the Cloud Technology Center of Delta Electronics where they can actually participate in the process of the development and commercialization of cloud computing technologies. In addition, both NTU and Delta Electronics agree to hold “Cloud Entrepreneurship Contest” on an annual basis, with a view toward soliciting and screening business plans which have high commercial values for cloud computing. Delta Electronics will provide lucrative seed investment money plus guidance toward commercial applications, so that young students will be encouraged to show their creativity while nurturing entrepreneurship.