Cloud vendors who don’t understand their customers will eventually "disappear", and industry cloud will become the future trend | Super View

 In the final analysis, those cloud companies that have gone bankrupt or acquired that cannot survive independently are "disappearing" because they cannot match the demands of customers.

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In 2006, Google CEO Eric Schmidt (Eric Schmidt) first proposed the concept of "Cloud Computing" at the Search Engine Conference (SES San Jose 2006). It was also that year that Amazon launched AWS, a cloud-based service platform. 

In 2008, the cloud industry began to welcome many heavyweight players, including traditional hardware vendors IBM, HP, Cisco, Intel, etc., software vendors Microsoft, Oracle, VMware, Internet giant Google, and domestic cloud vendor leader Alibaba . Enter the cloud computing industry. Up to now, cloud computing has become the most important IT infrastructure today.

The cloud industry has developed for more than ten years, with giant companies betting, innovative companies flooding in, and the law of survival in the jungle that swallows small forces has also emerged in the cloud computing ecosystem. Many cloud computing-related vendors fell into the rushing wave, some were swallowed up by giants, some fell into the funding gap, and some were lost in the choice of directions, lost their peers and comrades, and went to ruin.

The question that arises from this is, what value cloud vendors does the market need? What should cloud vendors do to continue to develop in the next stage of cloud computing?

Recently, 36 krypton interviewed Beijing Teamsun Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Teamsun Group") Tiancheng Cloud coo Wang Feng, a digital transformation enabler and listed company. answer.

Teamsun Tiancheng was established in Beijing in 1998. Its main business is to provide global customers with leading cloud computing solutions and industry-based digital services. Currently, more than 20 Teamsun holding or shareholding company, now has three listed companies: Teamsun Technology ( Shanghai Stock Exchange listed company: 600410), ASL Company (Hong Kong Stock Exchange listed companies: 0771) Hong Kong, the United States Grid Dynamics (US Nasdaq listed company: GDYN). Teamsun’s business organizations cover 33 cities in 9 countries and 31 delivery centers around the world, with more than 5,000 employees, and serving more than 16,000 customers in more than 10 important industries.

 The following is Wang Feng's dictation (edited):

Customers’ demands for “cloud computing” have not changed, but vendors have become more catering

Established in 1998, it entered the cloud computing business in 2010. After more than 20 years, Teamsun has transformed from an IT integrator to a comprehensive cloud computing service provider. It has truly witnessed the changes in the IT architecture of different industries in China. Local server, data center, private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud.

From the perspective of enterprise customers, their needs have always been a faster, more agile, safer, and lower-cost underlying architecture to better support the development of the upper-level business. This demand has never changed.

What has changed is manufacturers, who are becoming more proactive in catering to customer needs. In this process, manufacturers will continue to adjust technical strategies, product strategies, and market ecological strategies. Whether it is self-research, direct sales, or integration, the ultimate goal is to better meet customer needs. 

So, in the final analysis, those cloud companies that either went bankrupt or were merged that could not survive independently, the fundamental reason for "disappearing" is that they cannot match the demands of customers. For example, the technology is too weak to catch the mainstream advanced technology, and it is impossible to develop high-end products that better meet the needs of customers; the team is turbulent and cannot maintain continuous delivery of customer products; the market strategy is wrong and it is difficult to withdraw funds; or the product line It is difficult to meet customer needs independently and so on. 

From another perspective, it is not easy to really meet the demands of customers. In Teamsun’s view, at least the following three points should be done:

• The first is to understand the scenario; applications start from the scenario, and the manufacturer must first understand the different business scenarios of various customers and how he wants to optimize the business. For example, the businesses of government, energy, finance, operators, and logistics companies are not the same. Taking logistics companies as an example, there are big differences in scenarios between international logistics, domestic logistics and intra-city logistics, which service providers must understand.

• The second is the heavy industry; above the scene is the industry. Except for large platform-based manufacturers, most manufacturers only have the ability to concentrate on one or two or three major industries. To understand an industry thoroughly, manufacturers must understand the upstream and downstream relationships of the industry, have a good grasp of the business and IT architecture of each player in the industry, and must also understand the overall trend of the industry. Various technologies and solutions can produce What kind of effect is clear to the chest. For example, in the operator industry, the leading MSP "AsiaInfo Group" in the operator industry can fully understand the business and needs of the three major operator headquarters and branches in various provinces, prefectures and cities. 

• The third is fine service; whether it is integration or direct sales, service is still the core competitiveness of manufacturers. Although the needs of customers have not changed, they have become increasingly demanding. Teamsun Tiancheng acts as an agent for integration. A very important responsibility of an integrator is actually to do maintenance. Maintenance is a kind of service. This is also the difference between IT integrators or cloud hosting service providers (cloud MSP) and traditional vendors of the same kind. In traditional integrators, the main focus is on channels and customer relationships. The practice of cloud is more complicated, and customers' understanding of "cloud" is still in the popularization period. All-round service has become an important criterion for customers to evaluate vendors. In addition, platform-based cloud vendors are actually natural integrators. Their emergence has actually impacted the market of traditional integrators. For such vendors without transformation, they can only "die", and service transformation is the most important one. section.

For Teamsun itself, with the accumulation of customers in the industry for more than 20 years and the financial support of listed companies, we have the confidence to say that we can "understand the scene" and "focus on the industry", and "excellent service" is what we want to continue to improve. direction. In the past three years, the growth of our cloud business has been basically 30% to 50% annually. 

Today, we need to understand customers better. A typical trend is that more and more customer requirements are based on business, and there is less and less attention to technology and hardware. As a service provider, you must be able to focus on the customer's business. The optimization and adjustment of your core business logic, the speed of innovation, and the management method should all be based on the customer's perspective. 

At the same time, technology and solutions are still the foundation. It can be seen that cloud native and multi-cloud are the overall trend of the industry. Ms. Li Wei, deputy director of the Institute of Cloud Computing and Big Data, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, once gave a speech on "China Cloud Computing Development Status and Trends", which mentioned many Enterprises are using containers, microservice clouds and serverless native technologies. Starting from virtualization, cloud computing development technologies are getting closer and closer to application layer development and deployment, including the progressive relationship between containers and microservices, so the cloud native industry rate is also Continue to climb. Multi-cloud will inevitably become the first step in the digital transformation of many traditional enterprises in the era. The proportion of enterprises using hybrid cloud has continued to rise for many years. More than 60% of enterprises are using multiple public clouds or a hybrid architecture of public and private clouds.

If cloud vendors want to continue to develop, they cannot deviate from this trend. In this regard, Teamsun has adhered to its technical product positioning of "heterogeneous hybrid multi-cloud" since 2017. In September of this year, Teamsun Tiancheng released a new "Tiancheng Cloud", which is a new solution designed based on the development trend of cloud computing, the technical positioning of heterogeneous hybrid multi-cloud, and the core elements of "understand the scene, focus on the industry, and refined service". On the one hand, at the infrastructure level, it provides services including infrastructure and software construction, deployment, and migration operations; on the other hand, at the industry application service level, it also provides services including smart manufacturing, smart cities, smart parks, finance and cultural Cloud solutions and cloud operation services for travel and other industries. 

Industry cloud is the next opportunity for "cloud computing" 

With the development of cloud computing for more than ten years, we have been able to see the vertical and horizontal competition changes in the overall industry . At the IAAS layer, the basic pattern has been preliminarily determined. We judge that the future market will be dominated by several major general cloud vendors plus a number of industry cloud vendors. The purely private cloud vendors will eventually "die" or become private companies. The executive power of cloud or hybrid cloud strategy. "Only public cloud" is a long-term trend. This development trend can now be seen in Europe and the United States. They firmly believe that public cloud will dominate the world, and there is no need for decentralized privatization deployment and delivery. SAAS layer vendors are in the United States There are also reasons for better development. 

So why is there a market for industry clouds? This is related to China's national conditions. Customers in every industry in China are complex, and public cloud companies cannot cover them one by one. In addition, these large industries have large-scale characteristic ecosystems. These ecosystems often exist around large-scale industry leaders or organizations. These leaders and organizations themselves are cloud users, and at the same time are in the same school as small and medium-sized industry participants, closer and more understanding. They can better meet their needs. 

Now we have seen the emergence of such industry clouds, such as the UnionPay cloud in the financial industry, which is mainly for upstream and downstream partners in the payment-centric industry; BYD's BYD cloud service in advanced manufacturing. 

Compared with public clouds, industry clouds pay more attention to services and ecological radiation. Industry cloud is also an opportunity for cloud service vendors, because the construction of industry cloud still requires cloud computing professionals to do, and customers who can build and manage industry clouds must be leading giant enterprises. Such enterprises often cannot accept a single public cloud solution. Tend to adopt a hybrid multi-cloud architecture. In addition, the purpose of these companies to build a cloud is for service business development rather than the output of underlying cloud computing and cloud resources. The construction and management of the underlying resource pool, as well as helping business applications run better in the cloud, are exactly what cloud service providers can meet. 

But it needs to be clear that there will not be too many industry clouds. The survival of the industry cloud requires a large-scale ecological support, so it can only exist for a long time in highly concentrated and large-scale industries, such as the financial industry, automobiles, steel, government affairs, and operators. 

With the continuous advancement of "new infrastructure", technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence will continue to penetrate the industry, the demand for cloud computing will also become stronger, and the scale of the industry cloud market is gradually expanding. The market research organization IDC released the "China Gold The "Finance Cloud Market (Second Half of 2019) Tracking" report shows that the scale of China's financial cloud market reached US$3.34 billion in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 49.6%. Among them, the financial cloud infrastructure and cloud solutions market basically maintained simultaneous growth, with growth rates reaching 50.0% and 48.6% respectively. In terms of manufacturing, according to data from the National Institute of Intelligent Manufacturing System Innovation, the market size of China's cloud manufacturing industry reached 93.38 billion yuan in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 30.4%. In 2019, the market size of China's cloud manufacturing industry reached 120.84 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 27.9%, and it is expected to continue to increase at an average growth rate of 26% in the next three years. 

Co-construction and co-operation of industry cloud delivery and operating systems for industry giants is also the key business direction of Teamsun in the future.

Focusing on the improvement of chip manufacturing yield, "Zhongyiyun" is conducting tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round of financing

 Provide domestically produced alternative solutions for yield control for chip manufacturers in the semiconductor industry chain.

The "Proposals of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Term Goals for 2035" put forward that the system will deploy new infrastructure and accelerate the fifth generation of mobile communications, industrial Internet, and big data centers. Wait for construction. Artificial intelligence, quantum information, and integrated circuits will become the "troika" of priority development.

The 36Kr interviewed " Zhongyi Cloud " is a company based on industrial interconnection, big data and artificial intelligence, focusing on providing big data platforms and yield control solutions for chip manufacturers (Foundry and IDM) in the semiconductor industry chain. The team has been deeply involved in the industry for 15 years, and has reached in-depth cooperation with customers such as SMIC , Hua Hong Hongli , and has been successfully applied in many mass production lines.

Its ADC (Automatic Defect Classification System), DMS (Defect Management System) and YMS (Yield Rate Management System) products that integrate big data and artificial intelligence are the leading professional engineering software for the semiconductor wafer industry in China, which can provide more in-depth Data mining capabilities, more powerful information analysis capabilities, and smarter problem management and control capabilities have achieved full coverage from the full dimensions of yield improvement (discovery, analysis, and disposal), realizing localized substitution.

Semiconductor wafer manufacturing industry chain 

The BDYAP platform independently developed by "Zhongyiyun" is a yield big data platform based on the Industrial Internet. The industrial App it provides involves wafer defect detection and yield improvement in chip manufacturing, production planning and scheduling, equipment and personnel scheduling , Predictive equipment maintenance, intelligent quality inspection, asset monitoring and operation and maintenance, etc. It can achieve high ROI and multi-dimensional improvement of manufacturing efficiency and quality. The average price of similar software provided by international leading manufacturers is more than US$2 million, while the price of "Zhongyiyun" is less than half. The use of "Zhongyiyun" products can achieve "domestic substitution" with high quality and excellent price.

To solve the yield problem in wafer manufacturing, data analysis based on the Internet of Things is required. When collecting unstructured data from a mass production line for POC, it is necessary to use FDMS (Foundry Domain Expert System) to clean and manage the data and intelligently analyze and match the data. Train models through algorithms. One model requires multiple algorithms. Support, not an algorithm that eats all over the world. For example, there are two dimensions to measure the quality of AI ADC models: accuracy and purity. When the comprehensive index reaches 85%, it is possible to import the entire production line.

In addition, "Zhongyi Cloud" can also solve the problems of data tracking and data interaction in the wafer manufacturing process. For example, its Lot Tracing system can realize the data tracking of Foundry factory lot's full life cycle, which can improve the decision-making efficiency of production, management, and operation. The adopted Hadoop and Flink technical architecture have the advantages of high controllability, low cost, and timeliness. In addition, the SIIP industrial interconnection platform of "Zhongyiyun" can help foundry companies realize a business interaction and data interaction management platform that runs through the entire life cycle of business stages from design, tapeout, manufacturing, outsourcing and processing to after-sales. It is used to solve the problem that most Foundry does not have a unified industrial Internet platform to manage and track business chain breaks and data islands caused by data interaction with external partners.

Currently, "Zhongyiyun" yield control technology has been applied to three scenarios: AI+ADC (automatic defect recognition and classification), AI+Metrology (measurement) and AI+Mechanism Trace (tracing analysis). In AI automatic defect recognition scenarios, it can achieve an accuracy rate of greater than 95%, defeating KLA and AMAT; and the usual report output time in AI measurement scenarios is shortened from six hours to about one hour; in AI retrospective analysis, the Problems that cannot be solved by deposition can also achieve a success rate of more than 50%.

In terms of business, "Zhongyiyun" BD mainly has three channels: one is the most important, that is, the industry reputation after verification by the head manufacturer, and the successful case is a must-have ticket to enter other customer sites; the second is the entrepreneurial team for 15 years The accumulation of deep industry experience and contacts, the third is to establish the company's extensive market and industry awareness by participating in world and national competitions.

In August 2020, the State Council set a goal of achieving 70% chip self-sufficiency rate by 2025, but the current self-sufficiency rate is only about 20%. The entire industry's production capacity has at least three times more room for growth. Therefore, software and hardware products and solutions for big data and yield control also have sufficient growth potential. According to SEMI estimates, by the end of 2020, the overall 8-inch wafer supply capacity in China will reach 1.3 million pieces per month, and the monthly output of 12-inch wafers is also estimated to be 750,000 pieces per month.

In the future, different from "production automation" software, "Zhongyi Cloud" will continue to develop the "engineering automation" software market in Foundry wafer manufacturing and large silicon wafer production, including three sets of carriages of industrial interconnection, big data and AI yield control . Calculated based on the minimum market size of 100 Chinese Foundries and 5 large silicon wafer manufacturers during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period of 2020-2025 (equivalent to 1/20 of the benchmarking international manufacturers), and the minimum market size of each manufacturer’s annual R&D investment of 40 million. The investment amount is 21 billion yuan. In the domestic semiconductor industry, there are usually only 2-3 suppliers in the subdivisions. Therefore, according to the estimated market share of 20%, "Zhongyiyun" is expected to achieve about 4 billion yuan in revenue in 2025.

Li Haijun, the co-founder of "Zhongyiyun", told 36Kr that under the overall situation of self-control and control, the team established a vision to build a AiPC (AI Based Process Control) company with a market value of 100 billion in five years. The practice of the world's leading manufacturers in the semiconductor industry has shown that the advancement of Moore's Law by relying only on the evolution of processes and materials itself has become increasingly slow and difficult, and artificial intelligence has become a battleground for military experts.

"Zhongyiyun" expects to complete the Pre-A round of financing on the eve of New Year's Day in 2021. The funds will be used for industry promotion, research and development based on customer needs, and to strengthen the docking with the state-owned industrial chain. At the same time, the team is recruiting ( yinjiao@allinabc.com ).

8 Top Technology Trends That Will Define 2021

 It's time for trend forecasting again. As a trend, there is generally a certain continuity. However, due to the epidemic this year, some originally relatively stable trends have been accelerated. In general, because the epidemic has forced people to maintain physical isolation, the need for technology to allow everyone (companies and customers, internal companies, and companies and partners) to maintain virtual connections has become more urgent. Gartner has made predictions on the hot technology trends in 2021, you can refer to it. 

According to IT research organization Gartner, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the technological innovation and investment strategies of almost all companies in the world, because the "unprecedented" economic and social economic challenges have clearly shown that IT is the lifeline of enterprises in the new crown virus era. .

Gartner predicts that the major technology trends in 2021 will further disrupt the IT world and provide huge opportunities for solution providers and suppliers.

Gartner Research Vice President Brian Burke said at the recent Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2020: “The unprecedented socio-economic challenges encountered in 2020 require organizations to be resilient to future changes and composition.”

For example, when some employees return to work, they will encounter new sensors, RFID tags, and behavioral data technologies, which will affect the way they work. Gartner calls this new method of collecting and using data to drive behavior the Internet of Behavior, which is one of the nine trends in its latest "Gartner 2021 Strategic Technology Major Trends" report.

From autonomous technology and artificial intelligence, to cloud computing and emerging technologies, the following are nine technology trends that Gartner predicts will shake the market next year.

Behavioral Internet: Affecting the way employees work

Gartner said in the report that when the COVID-19 pandemic forced factories to temporarily close, those employees who returned to the workplace found themselves already being targeted by sensors or RFID tags, and these technologies were used to determine whether they washed their hands regularly. Computer vision can also determine whether employees are wearing masks and use horns to warn workers who violate regulations. Collecting and analyzing this kind of behavioral data to influence how employees behave at work is called the Internet of Behavior (IoB) .

When the organization not only improves the amount of data captured, but also improves the combination and use of data from different sources, IoB will affect the way the organization interacts with people. Another example is commercial vehicles. IoB technology can be used to monitor driving behavior, such as sudden braking and sharp turns, which companies can use to improve driver performance, driving routes, and safety.

IOB can collect, combine and process data from multiple sources, including business customer data, public sector and government agencies, social media, and citizen data processed by location tracking. Continuous innovation in the technology to process these data will allow this trend to flourish in 2021. But the key is to pay attention to the impact of privacy laws on technology. Different places have very different requirements for privacy, which will affect the adoption and scale of IoB.

Total Experience: "Create a sustainable competitive advantage"

Gartner defines the "total experience" trend as an effort to combine customer experience, employee experience, and user experience to transform business results. Its goal is to improve the overall experience of the intersection of all-round experiences from technology to employees to customers and users.

Gartner said that linking all these experiences closely, rather than improving them one by one, will allow companies to achieve differentiation that competitors do not have and are difficult to replicate, and "create a sustainable competitive advantage."

One of the use cases is in the field of telecommunications. We can see how one operator is to change the entire body of the customer user experience to improve the safety and satisfaction. The company is now to some app deployed a reservation system, so that when the customer within a range of 75 feet to reach the operating room of the appointment, you will receive a notification, guide them through the registration process, the customer will be prompted to tell How long will they have to wait before they can get in. The company also adjusted the scope of services to include more digital kiosks, allowing employees to use their tablets to jointly browse customers’ devices without having to touch each other’s hardware. Gartner said the result is a "safer, more seamless and integrated overall experience" for customers and employees.

Having a comprehensive experience will allow organizations to take advantage of disruptors in the COVID-19 era in 2021, including telecommuting, mobile, virtual, and distributed customers.

Hyperautomation: Let everything be automated, or there is a risk of being left behind

There is a trend that will accelerate in 2021, and that is to automate as many things as possible. Super automation refers to the idea that everything that can be automated in an organization should be automated.

Driving the trend of super-automation are those companies that have legacy processes that have not yet been streamlined. This process can cause huge costs and a wide range of problems. According to Gartner, many organizations in 2020 will rely on patching technologies to get support. The disadvantages of this technology are that it is not lean, not optimized, lacks correlation, and is not clear enough. At the same time, the acceleration of enterprise digitization puts forward requirements for efficiency, speed and popularity.

Gartner said: " Organizations that don't focus on efficiency, effectiveness, and business agility will be left behind ."

Anywhere Operations: A successful emergence from COVID-19

Gartner stated that "by 2021, "anywhere operating model will be critical for companies to successfully escape the impact of COVID-19."

The core of this trend of operating anywhere is an operating model that allows businesses to continue operating regardless of where customers, employees, and business partners are located.

For example, banks can handle everything from transfers to account setting up by relying on mobile apps, without any physical interaction. Digitization should now always be the default setting. Although there is still physical office space, the banking business should be enhanced digitally. Another example is contactless checkout in physical stores to achieve seamless delivery.

According to Gartner's report, by 2021 and beyond, the everywhere operating model will be "digital first, remote first" .

Distributed Cloud: "The Cloud of the Future"

Gartner defines distributed cloud as a cloud service that is distributed in different geographic locations, but operation, governance, and evolution are still the responsibility of public cloud providers. In the past few years, as many organizations have or are migrating some applications and data to the public cloud, this trend has been developing.

In 2021, distributed clouds can better enable organizations’ services to be physically closer, thereby solving low latency issues, reducing data costs, and helping to adapt to laws that have specific scope requirements for data storage locations. However, organizations will still benefit from the public cloud economy and do not need to manage their own private clouds. The complexity and cost of the latter will cause problems for enterprises.

Gartner said: " Distributed cloud is the future of cloud computing ."

Cybersecurity Mesh: A more modular and responsive security solution

Network security mesh network is a distributed network security control architecture solution with scalability, flexibility and reliability. As more and more assets are not within the scope of traditional security, this security trend is increasing.

The powerful network security mesh network can define the security scope with the identity of people and things. Through centralized strategy orchestration and distributed strategy execution, this security strategy can promote a more modular and responsive security solution.

Gartner said that in 2021, as the significance of border protection weakens, the security solution of the "walled city" will continue to evolve to meet the needs of every enterprise for modern network security.

Intelligent Composable Business: Adaptability is the key

Smart business portfolio refers to companies that can adapt to the current situation and environment (for example, during COVID-19) and "fundamentally reorganize" their own company.

A major trend in 2020 is for organizations to accelerate their digital business strategies, while promoting faster digital transformation, so that they become more agile and can make business decisions faster based on currently available data. Gartner said this will remain one of the biggest trends in 2021.

Gartner said that to achieve this goal, companies must be able to better obtain information, use better insights to enhance this information, and have the ability to quickly respond to the implicit impact of such insights. This trend will also include increasing the degree of autonomy and democratization of the entire organization so that some business departments can respond quickly without getting into trouble due to inefficient processes.

AI Engineering: Realizing the full value of AI

The effect of investing in a reliable artificial intelligence engineering strategy is to realize the full value of AI investment while establishing the performance, scalability, interpretability, and reliability of AI models. Gartner said that many AI projects often face maintainability, scalability, and governance issues, which are a challenge for most organizations.

AI engineering provides a way to make AI part of the mainstream DevOps process, rather than a series of specialized, chimney projects. According to Gartner, AI project sinks provide a clearer path to realize the value of time to gather a variety of disciplines, "AI tame speculation", while managing a variety of AI technology portfolio.

Due to the governance of AI engineering, responsible AI will also become an emerging trend in 2021. Trust, transparency, ethics, fairness, interpretability, and compliance issues must rely on AI to do its responsibilities. Gartner said: "This is the specific implementation of the AI ​​accountability system,"

(See: Well-known venture capital institutions: Improving the AI ​​economy by "taming the long tail" )

Privacy-Enhancing Computation: Share data securely

In terms of putting people first, Gartner predicts that one of the most important technology trends in 2021 is privacy-enhancing computing. This privacy-enhancing computing trend will use three technologies that can protect data when it is used. One is to provide a trusted environment, and then process or analyze sensitive data in this environment. The second technology is to process and analyze in a decentralized manner, and the third technology is to encrypt data and algorithms before processing or analysis.

Gartner said this trend allows organizations to "collaborate safely across regions and with competitors without sacrificing confidentiality." Privacy-enhanced computing is specifically designed to meet the growing demand for shared data while maintaining privacy or security.