Chinese information technology giant Inspur Group inaugurated a 5.5 billion yuan ($830 million) industrial park for big data companies in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, on Aug 15.

An enormous amount of data will be gathered, processed and traded at the 89,000-square-meter park in Xuelang town, which is exciting news for Wuxi's internet of things industry.

"The park will complete the local IoT industrial chain, which will benefit small-scale IoT enterprises as they rely heavily on all sorts of data," said Liu Yan, deputy director of the technology and information bureau of Wuxi's Xinwu district.

The park will contain several high-profile projects including the Wuxi headquarters for Inspur's big data operations and a large-scale data marketplace called the "Sensing China" Big Data Transaction Center, as well as a research institute and several incubators for big data start-ups.

In particular, the "Sensing China" center promises to become an integral part of China's big data industry, attracting more companies to base their operations in Wuxi.

The center aims to become China's main marketplace for companies looking to buy and sell data.

The center will be powered by Inspur's Tianyuan platform, an online e-commerce platform for big data that already houses more than 51,200 terabytes of data.

According to Sun Pishu, CEO of Inspur, his company aims to dominate the trade in data in a similar way to how Alibaba dominates China's e-commerce market.

"The goal of Inspur is to become the Alibaba of data transactions," said Sun.

If the "Sensing China" platform proves to be a success, it could be hugely valuable to the development of China's big data industry, according to Yang Xueshan, a professor at Peking University.

"Given that economies of scale are significant in a country with a big population, China actually has a competitive advantage in big data, which can be boosted further through innovation," said Yang.

Inspur is building the park with the support of the Wuxi government, with which the company signed a strategic cooperation agreement in late 2016.

The company expects the park to create about 10,000 jobs and house hundreds of companies generating combined annual revenue of 50 billion yuan within three to five years.

"The opening of the Inspur Big Data Industrial Park will signal the rise of the big data industry in Wuxi," said Wuxi Mayor Wang Quan.

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(China Daily 09/09/2017 page8)