Compete for the "cloud" side

“A sword has been sharpened in ten years, but the frost blade has never been tried.” As of 2017, cloud computing has developed in China for ten years, and it is still a hot topic in the industry today, and is listed as driving a new round of One of the three major technologies "ABC" for industrial transformation (artificial intelligence AI, big data and cloud computing).

Under the upsurge of digital transformation, many enterprises have begun to embrace cloud computing. According to a Gartner research report, the global public cloud market has grown from US$68.3 billion in 2010 to US$209.2 billion in 2016, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.51%. It is expected that the growth rate of the industry scale will remain above 15% from 2017 to 2020, and it is expected to reach US$383.4 billion by 2020.

With the increasingly mature technology and market, the competition in the cloud computing industry has begun to enter the second half. In addition to the giants competing for hegemony and balance, many startups are also competing to reap the benefits of cloud computing, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. However, from the perspective of current cloud services, the solutions provided by many enterprises still cannot fully cover the new and changing needs of users. From this point of view, if they want to get a share of the industry, Chinese companies must seize the opportunities of industry development, let the technology truly implement, and provide solutions that truly meet the needs of users.

The road to "cloudification"

Google CEO since 2006 Eric Schmidt first proposed the concept of cloud computing. The development of cloud computing has become a behemoth that includes infrastructure, computing platforms and solutions. In 2010, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the "Notice on Doing a Good Job in the Pilot Demonstration of Cloud Computing Service Innovation and Development", and the first year of cloud computing was officially opened. In the past two years, cloud computing has begun to enter the 2.0 era, the industry structure has initially stabilized, and the demand explosion period is officially ushered in.

At this stage, more and more traditional enterprises have embarked on the light "cloud" to improve the quality and efficiency of enterprises with the help of cloud computing. Hu Houkun, Huawei's rotating CEO, once said that in the "cloud 2.0 era", traditional industries will be "awakened" and traditional enterprises will become the protagonists of "cloudification". It predicts that by 2025, all enterprises will use cloud technologies and models, and more than 85% of enterprise applications will be deployed on the cloud.

Cloud computing empowers traditional enterprises to transform and upgrade, helping enterprises focus on core business and adapt to changing market competition more quickly. Huang Yingjie, senior architect of IBM cloud platform, said, "The data generated by the enterprise itself is unique, which is also a prerequisite for enterprises to form a differentiated competitive advantage." In this era when data is king, enterprises will inevitably generate massive amounts of data in the process of operation. These data with huge potential value can only be turned from waste into treasure with the help of cloud computing, thereby effectively driving user business and business development. Process innovation to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Joe Weinman, a top cloud computing strategist and author of "Cloud Economics", once mentioned, "The future of cloud is not a cost center, but a profit center. It can innovate many new business models and become a new profit growth point for enterprises. ".

How should traditional enterprises embark on the road of "cloudification"? Enterprises should choose cloud services that suit their own characteristics based on their own development needs. "Large enterprises tend to build their own private clouds, because they pay more attention to data security and privacy, and have corresponding strengths; start-ups use public clouds more, which can reduce their cost investment in IT facilities, thereby speeding up business deployment; some Enterprises choose hybrid cloud. Enterprises can choose suitable cloud services according to their own situation.” Wan Xiaowei said.

On the other hand, cloud computing is an irreversible development trend driving a new round of digital revolution, but enterprises' awareness of cloud still needs to be improved. "Chinese enterprises don't have enough awareness of cloud computing." Wan Xiaowei, Ph.D. in management of Sun Yat-sen University, vice president of Zhongda Consulting and general manager of the Information Consulting Division, said in an interview with "CEConline", "In fact, cloud computing itself does not It's not complicated, just like we have electricity in every house, but you don't need to build your own generator, you just need to plug it in, the work of generating electricity is handled by the grid and the power plant. The concept of cloud computing is similar to this. In fact, cloud computing unifies all storage and computing functions into one computer room or data center, which provides computing, transmission, and storage functions in a unified manner.”

The pattern is tentatively determined

From the current point of view, the cloud computing market is showing a Matthew effect, with companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google occupying more than 50% of the market share. According to a report released by Synergy Research Group, Microsoft, IBM, Google Cloud, etc. are all growing faster than Amazon, but Amazon is still the leader in the global cloud computing market, judging from its 33% market share.

In China, giants such as Tencent, Huawei, and Ali occupy half of the Chinese market, while other start-up and emerging cloud computing companies have also entered the industry in large numbers, hoping to gain a share of the huge Chinese market.

Judging from the current industry competition, the way giants compete for users mainly depends on the innovation of business models and starts from their own advantages. For example, Alibaba Cloud, which has abundant user resources, mainly provides services for enterprises with a large number of users. Its business model is to quickly acquire a large number of users with an obvious price advantage in the early stage, and then supplement it with its products as a means of payment in the later stage to further increase revenue. The business model of HUAWEI CLOUD, which has deep independent research and development capabilities, is mainly to enter the enterprise-level market with hardware equipment, and realize it through technology and services.

“The development of cloud computing industry has gone out of chaos and has gradually become stable. The market development is mostly concentrated in giant enterprises, and there are also many small enterprises participating in the competition. The major giants compete through differentiation, price wars and other means of competition. To seize the market, it will naturally form a monopoly, and small enterprises mainly use diversified applications to solve user pain points as a breakthrough." Wan Xiaowei said.

In addition to giants, cloud computing start-ups are also popular with capital. In the first half of 2017, there were 11 huge investment cases in China's cloud computing market. Judging from the announced financing data, the total amount exceeded 5 billion yuan.

Wan Xiaowei believes that start-ups can make breakthroughs based on cloud applications and meet the diverse needs of enterprises in a differentiated way. "In the field of cloud-based infrastructure, it can be said that there is not much room for start-ups, but in the field of application, start-ups can deeply cultivate market segments."

The promising Chinese market needs more participation , further unleashing its huge potential. In 2016, the overall scale of China's cloud computing market reached 279.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 41.7%. Among them, the market size of public cloud services reached 22.86 billion yuan in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 46.3%. CCID Consulting predicts that the scale of the cloud computing market will maintain a growth rate of more than 20% in the future. By 2019, the scale of China's cloud computing market will reach 570.64 billion yuan. From this point of view, whether it is an Internet giant or a new type of start-up company, it is conducive to the development of industrial diversification and further enriches the upstream and downstream industry chain resources.

Breakthrough key points

Although cloud computing is one of the important means of enterprise transformation, there are still various concerns in China's cloud computing market. Wan Xiaowei said: "Most large foreign companies have started to use cloud computing, but there are very few domestic companies. Many of them build their own data centers and have their own clouds. The overall application of cloud computing is not that high. The awareness of cloud computing is not high enough. At present, the country has issued many policies to promote cloud computing, but only for platform enterprises, and the support for application-oriented enterprises is relatively low, so the promotion effect is not very good. Second, there are security concerns, this is cloud computing The biggest bottleneck in computing at present, many enterprises will worry that some commercial secrets and information will be lost, leaked, stolen, etc. If these problems are not solved, enterprises will be resistant to cloud computing.”

From this point of view, the first task of alleviating user concerns is to improve security measures. "First of all, enterprises should strengthen their investment in security technology. In addition, the government should also take protective measures. Now, Chinese netizens are almost 'streaking', and many apps have stolen our personal information and privacy. Therefore, for information security The relevant legislation can effectively ensure data security, which also requires companies to jointly abide by and maintain order." Wan Xiaowei suggested.

On the other hand, in the digital age, companies are constantly changing with trends, so their needs are becoming more and more personalized. For enterprise users, it is far from enough to deploy a cloud architecture. Diversified cloud services are a better solution. It can be said that the segmentation trend of cloud services is unstoppable. As a result, some leading cloud service providers have begun full deployments. It is understood that the CMS enterprise cloud set released by IBM provides enterprise users with a private cloud with high security, and also provides efficient cloud computing services and implements a pay-as-you-go business model.

However, there are some possible drawbacks to be aware of in providing user-flexible solutions. Wan Xiaowei suggested: "For software manufacturers, if they are compatible with various possible solutions, it may make their information systems highly complex, resulting in poor user experience. So either solve this problem or extract the common pain points of enterprises and let the cloud Applications have become simple and easy to use."

In any case, China's cloud computing market is in a period of initial expansion and will continue to grow rapidly in the future. It will be further optimized in Hundred Flowers Blossoms.

Picture/ Wan Xiaowei