TIANJIN, Jul. 3, 2009 (Xinhua News Agency) -- China Unicom's (OOTC:CHUFF) (0762.HK; CHU.NYSE) Tianjin data center was put into operation on Thursday.

The data center, called the Tianjin Huayuan International Data Port Five-Star data center, will be a base providing data center outsourcing services to domestic and foreign enterprises, Internet IT firms, and governmental departments, according to Jiang Zhengxin, vice general manager of China United Telecommunications Corp., parent of China Unicom.

The data center, the country's largest one in scale, is capable of providing a series of services, including data center trusteeship, network arrangement, network security, system integration, and server maintenance.

According to Jiang, the telecom operator plans to strengthen overall planning of development of internet data center (IDC) to launch such center in major areas of the country. Up to now, it established 14 four-star data centers in key Chinese cities, namely Beijing, Tianjin and Qingdao.

The carrier expects to establish an international storage center and an international remote-backup center later.