In China, most data centers belonged to the big state phone carriers. 21Vianet built its business by belonging to none of them. Its data centers connected to every major network, so a website or game company could reach users on all of them from one place. When the Beijing company went public in April 2011, it was the largest carrier-neutral data center provider in China by revenue, with sites in 33 cities and over 39,000 servers under management.

Wired to Every Carrier

Sheng Chen and Jun Zhang started the business in 1999. Chen became chairman and chief executive. China's internet traffic was split among rival carriers, and moving data between their networks was slow. 21Vianet's answer was neutrality. It linked its data centers to all the major carriers and to its own network, and it rented space, power, and bandwidth to companies that needed fast access across China.

Fifteen Dollars and the Cloud

21Vianet sold American depositary shares at $15 each on April 21, 2011, on Nasdaq under the ticker VNET. It later became Microsoft's partner for running Azure and Office 365 inside China, where foreign companies cannot operate those services alone. The company changed its name to VNET Group. It still trades on Nasdaq as VNET and keeps building data centers for China's cloud and AI demand.

Cover: Bamboo-Covered Stream in Spring Rain, Xia Chang. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for bamboo spreading along a stream (a network grown across China).