Hohhot is developing a Cloud Computing Industry Base with a planned area of 25 square kilometers, by combining the Shengle Modern Services Base in Horinger county, at 20 sq km, and the national Information Technology and Industrialization Integration and Innovation Experimental Base, at 5 sq km. The city is relying on its mature environment for cloud computing and has projects with China's three largest telecommunications operators -- China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile-and a national Test Center for Cloud Applications project.

These four projects cost above 50 billion yuan and call for 237,000 rack cabinets and nearly 3.7 million servers, for China's largest, most complete cloud computing platform that combines information networking, computing, storage and security. 

A China Unicom Information Park and Phase I of a China Telecom Northwest Base are already in operation and the first enterprises, including Baidu and Alibaba, have moved in. Construction work on a China Mobile Data Center and a Shengle Inner Mongolia Software Park and Inner Mongla Bulk Animal Product Exchange has begun. Well-known domestic and international IT companies are expected to invest in Hohhot and some have signed cooperation agreements, including the Institute of Computing Technology Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Future International Information Co, and IBM. 

The Hohhot Government Affairs Cloud Computing Data Center – which recently officially started operations – is as an important project for Hohhot's development as a smart city, according to local officials in the capital of North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

They said annual e-government construction and operating costs would be reduced by more than one third with the help of the center – and government system deployment times had already been reduced by more than 50 percent.

Currently, a shared exchange platform for the date center has been developed, officials added.

The government's non-secret business systems of various committees, offices and bureaus were transferred to the data center.

Data sharing between various departments was being realized, officials said.