Shanda has announced Grand Cloud’s open beta test today. The platform’s products include cloud host, cloud storage, cloud hard disk, digital distribution and cloud monitoring. This model is similar to Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services). The closed test of Grand Cloud was started on June 16.

Amazon’s AWS was released worldwide in 2006 and has hundreds of thousands of users in more than 190 countries/ regions. Last year, its income was $500 million and analysts predict it will reach 1 billion dollars in 2012. A lot of game companies have acquired Amazon’s AWS service, while Zynga has decided to build its own data center. Cloud computing is still at the initial stage in China. Sina and Alibaba are introducing their cloud computing services and Shanda is a new competitor.