share by service demonstration. With users actively seeking for personalized cloud services,
cloud applications are growing rapidly. The scale of the market is expanding with the gradual
formation of the competitive landscape in the basic cloud services industry, the maturing
cloud service solutions, and the pushing of Software as a Service (SaaS) into the
mainstream.
In Taiwan, for example, the government’s passing of the “Cloud Computing Industry
Development Act” in April, 2010 (its name changed to “Cloud Computing Applications and
Industry Development Act” in November 2012) and the formation of the “Cloud Computing
Association in Taiwan” in October 2010 affirmed its strategic commitment in cloud computing.
Leveraging the existing strength in the hardware for Information and Communications
Technology (ICT), software development capabilities are enhanced to offer total solutions on
the cloud infrastructure. Cloud-based public services are used to boost the overall supply /
demand and to improve quality of service (QoS). Industry-wide innovation of technology
applications are encouraged to stimulate research and development of application software,
and to offer innovative cloud service for individuals and small and medium enterprises
(
SMEs). The R&D emphasizes on integrated energy-saving and environmental protection
cloud solutions. In addition, the authorities use policy settings to promote cloud industry
technology development programs (TDPs), to encourage industrial investment in the R&D of
cloud computing technology and application development, to raise technology R & D
capacity of the industry, and to coach the transformation of the industry to enhance its
competitiveness.
By the end of February 2013, there were more than 30 international and local information
services providers using a non-profit cloud development and testing platform, to assist the
government agencies to test and validate cloud services that are closely related to people’s
lives, such as food history tracking, disaster prevention, electronic medical records,
electronic dictionaries, carbon footprint tracking, electronic invoices, the Government App,
agriculture, public data on environment and traffic, and cadastral maps, etc. Also, more than
50
information and communication services providers and technology service providers
were consulted to assess the feasibility of transferring its ICT infrastructure onto cloud, and
to address issues such as the integration of the old and new systems, data interchange,
resource allocation, service innovation models, and change of business models.
For the local industry, the mainstream ICT hardware manufacturers, such as Quanta,
Inventec, Delta Electronics, HTC, Asus and some hardware and software vendors,
developed a variety of IaaS solutions for the infrastructure necessary for public and private
clouds. The three major telecom operators, Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile, and Far
