Chinese computing platform and information technology application solutions provider Inspur has launched the first cloud data center operating system named "Sea of Clouds OS".

According to Inspur, Sea of Clouds OS' availability is over 99.99%. It supports hardware online expansion, plug-and-play functions, and can synchronously manage over 5,000 servers. At the same time, this system can help data centers save energy by 70% and significantly improve their resource utilization.

The nature of cloud computing is to aggregate resources and distribute an on-demand service package to users. Based on the cloud computing platform, the data center operating system is designed to manage hardware and software resources, schedule resources and integrate data. The operating system plays a key role in transforming cloud computing resources into services.

Zhang Dong, director for Inspur's system software and general manager for the research and development of cloud computing products, said that traditional data centers are facing problems such as difficulty in sharing resources, increasing power consumption, higher costs, complicated management, and low profitability. Sea of Clouds OS, on the other hand, can increase or decrease resources based on the dynamic traffic load, realize unified resource management, and lower costs.

In August 2010, Inspur announced its cloud computing strategy and raised the "industry cloud" concept. It also revealed its plans to launch the first self-developed cloud computing data operating system in China. In 2010, Inspur Group realized operating revenue of CNY30.5 billion, a year-over-year increase of 12%.

The market research firm IDC once predicted that from 2010 to 2014, the compound growth rate of cloud computing market will reach 27.4%, which is about five times as that of the overall information technology market.