OREANDA-NEWS. NEC Corporation and Chongqing City in China formed a strategic partnership in the smart city and cloud services areas in April 2013.  As part of this partnership, and in order to promote greater regional development, NEC established NEC (Chongqing) Solutions Co., Ltd. (NEC Chongqing) on 28 October 2013. The new company is capitalized at 7 million USD (NEC 100%), begins with approximately 20 employees, and is aiming to expand to approximately 200 staff over the next 5 years.

As the central city for strategic development in China's middle-west region, Chongqing City aims to shift from an industrial-oriented economy to a communications industry hub. NEC and Chongqing City are cooperating in the cultivation of IT related human resources, the expansion of sales and the development of state-of-the-art technologies, products and services. In addition to promoting the economic development of Chongqing, this partnership aims to expand the development and provision of services to markets throughout China and the world.

NEC Chongqing enables NEC to contribute its strength in information and communications technologies (ICT) while becoming an important strategic base for NEC's business development in China. Moreover, the new company aims to enhance business even further through the creation of a wide variety of cloud services that support communities and the advancement of smart cities.

NEC Chongqing is scheduled to begin providing cloud services by the end of March 2014, leveraging NEC data center capabilities and cloud service delivery platform. Furthermore, the new company will serve as a development and sales base for ICT solutions. NEC Chongqing also plans to roll out a wide variety of services in support of social infrastructure, including government, transportation, disaster prevention, energy, medicine and agriculture related services.

Moreover, the new company will establish an educational program and provide educational tools in support of the "Chongqing International Cloud Institute" being established in February 2014 in order to train cloud service professionals and certify technologies.

Going forward, NEC aims to establish new research facilities linked with NEC Chongqing that will drive the development of customer cloud service applications and research behind cloud computing technologies.