Taiwan's biggest telecommunications company, Chunghwa Telecom, signed an agreement Monday with the world's largest contract laptop maker to jointly develop cloud computing software, services and hardware products aimed at markets in Asia.
Chunghwa and Quanta Computer will focus on Taiwan first, offering Web storage and services hosting as well as projects tailored to customer needs, they said in a joint statement. They will also create new products and services. The companies hope to lead government offices, businesses and more into cloud computing through the initiative.
"The biggest challenge to entering cloud computing services is providing the rich applications and services that attract big clients," the statement says. "Under the framework of this memorandum of understanding, Chunghwa Telecom and Quanta Computer will cooperate to develop software, hardware, and systems platforms as well as testing, certification and more."
The agreement comes at a time when products from another Quanta Computer cloud computing project are due out. The Taiwanese company expanded a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) last year to include new cloud computing and mobile technologies. Quanta has said the first products from the partnership will be out this year.
Chunghwa Telecom has been offering some cloud services in Taiwan for some time, but this partnership stands to greatly expand its work in cloud computing, the company's chairman said at a press conference in Taipei.