Intel announced on December 10 that the company will conduct several projects to initiate cooperation among academia, industry and research institutes and team up with Taiwan's PC maker Asus to tap lucrative business opportunities from cloud storage market, Taiwan's Economic Daily News reported on December 11, 2013. Under the tie-up, both parties aim to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness of cloud storage systems leveraging DSS (Differentiated Storage Service) technology of Intel Labs in the hope of facilitating cloud storage suppliers to enable optimization of existing cloud-based environments, according to the same source.