The "Cloud Plan" coincides with the same, but the theme of the times is no longer | waletslot, rtp ceri123

I rushed to a late episode, but was not absent in the end. After Tencent and Alibaba made organizational structural adjustments, Baidu founder and chairman Robin Li recently issued an internal letter announcing structural adjustments.

From a content point of view, Baidu’s organizational structure adjustment mainly includes two aspects. First, the Intelligent Cloud Division (ACU) is upgraded to the Intelligent Cloud Group (ACG). Second, the operation and maintenance, infrastructure and group-level sharing platform of the search company and each BG are integrated into the basic technology system (TG). In addition, Robin Li also shouted the slogan "Realize the goal of 'Baidu on the Cloud' as soon as possible." It is not difficult to find that "cloud" has become the core vocabulary of Baidu's structural adjustment. Prior to this, "All in AI" was a label that Baidu had been deeply rooted in in the past few years.

In terms of "cloud", although Baidu Cloud has been launched for some years, it seems that the lack of mobile Internet has caused shortcomings in the scene. It seems that it has never been able to fly to the cloud, and it is not as good as Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud in terms of scale and sound. The latest "The Forrester Wave: Evaluation of China's Full-Stack Public Cloud Development Platform Vendors in the Third Quarter of 2018" released by the international research company Forrester shows that Tencent Cloud ranks in the first echelon together with Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft Cloud, Amazon Cloud, and Huawei Cloud, and is rated as "Leaders", while Baidu Cloud is only in the second echelon.

From the current point of view, Baidu's cloud services seem to be "overdue", but Baidu, which is known for its technical genes, may not have no chance to catch up with AT.

Tencent adjusted its organizational structure in October this year and established two new business groups: Cloud and Smart Industry Group (CSIG) and Platform and Content Group (PCG). Ma Huateng stated in his open letter that Tencent's goal is to "provide a 'digital interface' for traditional and physical enterprises in all walks of life. Although people's attention is more on the industrial Internet, the "cloud" is definitely a link that cannot be ignored.

Faced with Tencent’s high-profile attack, Alibaba, which is currently the domestic leader, will naturally not ignore the actions of this most important domestic rival. Just last month, Zhang Yong announced that Alibaba has launched a new round of organizational structure upgrades, mainly targeting Alibaba Cloud and the retail business group. Coupled with Baidu's just-announced adjustments, BAT's "cloud plan" has risen to unprecedented heights.

Where does the tacit understanding between the giants come from? Bottleneck, risk, value

One thing that is certain is that the organizational structure adjustments of Alibaba and Baidu are definitely not following the trend of Tencent. Because organizational structure adjustment is not a simple matter, it is about aThe strategic layout for the long-term development of an enterprise is very different from the direct proxy war in the consumer Internet era, and structural adjustment does not come easily. After all, every large enterprise has complex interest relationships within it.

From this, we can conclude that BAT's "cloud" layout this time is not to follow each other's trends, but to have an unprecedented tacit understanding, and this tacit understanding mainly comes from the following two aspects:

Driven by a sense of worry: Beware of path dependence turning advantages into disadvantages

There is always no shortage of substitutes behind an enterprise, especially in an uncertain and dramatically changing business environment. How to maintain self-driven sustainable development has become the key.

Especially for BAT, in the context of the mobile Internet era, the emergence of TMD is actually a lesson for BAT. New technologies and new environments can easily create new unicorns and even giants, so existing BAT must take precautions before they occur and maintain crisis awareness at all times.

From a business perspective, from the PC Internet to the mobile Internet era, BAT has always been a leading or even dominant force in China's Internet. Tencent is a social + gaming company, Alibaba is an e-commerce company, and Baidu is a search + advertising company. Their main business can still bring them huge revenue, but the emergence of a series of "black swans" has also cast a shadow on BAT's glorious growth data.

Let’s talk about Tencent first. To sum up, Tencent’s development method is to obtain traffic through social platforms and make money through games and advertising. However, Toutiao has squeezed out Tencent’s traffic and advertising revenue in terms of short videos and information feed advertising, and today’s Toutiao has become such a climate that it is difficult to “kill” it. In terms of gaming, this business itself has its own controversial genes. It can bring high income but also has many uncertain factors from policies and public opinion. This has been deeply felt by Tencent in the past year.

As for Alibaba, in recent years we have often seen Alibaba "buy, buy, buy", staking out land everywhere, and its cloud computing business itself is already the number one in the country, but its main income still comes from e-commerce. The story of new retail is indeed beautiful, and efficiency improvement driven by technology is indeed the direction of industrial progress. However, efficiency is only one dimension of retail. Alibaba’s biggest anxiety is actually traffic. The traffic dividends of the Internet have been exhausted. When will the utopia of new retail be realized? How big are the dividends of new retail? There is no formula for calculating this. The industry also has more wolves than meat, and the total amount of demographic dividend and consumption dividend is also limited, which also means that Alibaba urgently needs to find new income entrances.

Baidu's anxiety is actually obvious. In the mobile Internet era, compared with Alibaba and Tencent, whose main businesses are stable and do not have many internal and external troubles, Baidu's strategic hesitation in the mobile Internet has caused the argument that "Baidu is falling behind" to spread, and therefore seems to be more anxious. In summary, its main business is still "search + advertising", but the mobile Internet scenario is fragmented by various mobile applications, and Baidu's applicable scenarios in the PC era are severely limited. Search engines can only act as a way to obtain long-tail traffic; the era of simply searching for information has passed, and it has come to an era of people looking for information to information looking for people; and in terms of information flow, we have to face competition from first movers like Tencent and Toutiao, and for new businessesThe layout has become a matter of course.

The advantages of any company cannot exist for a long time, and examples like Nokia's are already common. It can be said that the bottleneck pressure and competitive threats in BAT's main business in the past year are the driving force for their tacit understanding now. Advantages are likely to become disadvantages in the development of the enterprise. Adjusting the group's value structure and improving its own genes will have little impact on its main business, but the development of new businesses will clear up the internal environment.

Great changes in the external technology environment: Has the singularity of “cloud value” arrived?

Why start the "Cloud Plan" now? The value of an enterprise lies in pursuing value and creating value, and the tacit understanding of giants in cloud also comes from their prediction of the value of this technology. According to the Internet Jianghu (VIPIT1) team, this is mainly based on the following two aspects:

On the one hand, cloud technology has achieved the return of [value rationality].

Ray Kurzweil mentioned in the preface of his book "The Singularity is Near" that traditional IT is moving towards resource utilization, that is, computing can be resourced like water and electricity. This will be a major trend in future development. Now it seems that the first step to realize this trend must be the cloud.

Cloud services are mainly divided into distributed computing and distributed storage. They provide computing, services and applications to the public as a public facility. They are known as the "water, electricity and coal" in the digital business era. From the perspective of the cloud service itself, is there a bubble in its value? The answer is "yes." Any industry driven by new technologies often has the characteristics of high valuation, low revenue, high risk, long cycle, and high uncertainty. The same is true for cloud services, but the biggest bubble of cloud services has actually burst.

In 2005, Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Web Services, which also marked the cloud computing platform. Around 2007, cloud computing became one of the most concerning topics in the IT field. It is an important area that many large enterprises and Internet IT construction are considering and investing in.

In January 2009, Alibaba Software established the first "E-commerce Cloud Computing Center" in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, and cloud services began to take root among domestic Internet companies.

In the following years, various cloud service categories became dazzling. Almost Internet companies, operators, and even those related to the Internet had cloud products. This was actually the bubble period of cloud services. After 2014, the popularity of cloud gradually returned to rationality. Globally, cloud services are gradually becoming more rational, but subtly, they have taken root in more and more industries. Now, BAT and foreign technology giants have begun to further develop their efforts in the cloud.

It can be seen that the development of cloud services actually caters to the [Gardner Technology Hype Cycle]. The so-called Gardner Hype Cycle refers to the five stages of technology maturity: 1 is the embryonic period; 2 is the overheating period, where bubbles may appear; 3 is the trough period, also known as the disillusionment period; 4 is the recovery period, also known as the recovery period. People begin to reflect on problems and consider the value of technology from a practical perspective; 5 is the maturity period, also known as the plateau period. The technology has become commonplace.

It is not difficult to see that the current cloud services have actually gone through bubbles and troughs, and have entered the recovery stage. The entire cloud service system such as cloud storage and cloud computing has matured, value rationality has returned, and industrial structure adjustments have been made. The technical environment and market environment of the Nuggets cloud service market have matured. This may be an important reason why BAT structure adjustment is so tacit.

On the other hand, the cloud is the "accelerator" for the development of the industrial Internet.

There is a saying in the technology circle: people tend to overestimate the situation in the next two years and underestimate the results in the next 10 years.

If this sentence were placed ten years ago, the next ten years would be about the cloud. If we put it now, the next ten years actually refer to the industrial Internet. Fortunately, today's technology giants have begun to focus on this area that may affect human society in the next ten years.

The current core of the Industrial Internet is undoubtedly the integration of ICT and OT technologies, among which the value of cloud services as a "pioneer" has now been fully demonstrated.

Cheap storage and sufficient computing power are the key driving factors for the rise of Alibaba's industrial Internet. By providing cloud storage, big data and big computing functions, it accelerates the digitalization process of enterprises, allowing cloud services to act as the biggest driving force for connected devices and enterprise Internet of Things.

Taking Alibaba as an example, Alibaba Cloud's ET city brain and industrial brain have also been deployed in some cities, factories, and institutions. The scenarios covered also include transportation, medical care, finance, smart manufacturing, etc. This shows the "acceleration" value of the cloud.

Tencent, which is a few steps behind Alibaba, also sees the value of the cloud. Coupled with the past consumer Internet era, Tencent has achieved business layout in 192 scenarios in gaming, video, finance, retail, e-commerce, transportation and other industries, which has laid the foundation for scenario integration for the implementation of its cloud plan.

Baidu may be the weakest link among the three BAT giants, but its layout in the field of artificial intelligence cannot be underestimated. After all, Baidu, which is in a strategic offensive position, is more willing to work on new businesses and technologies than Alibaba and Tencent, which are in a strategic defensive position. Baidu can also export its own Baidu Cloud through the provision of AI technology and products.

On the contrary, many technology companies that have little or no experience in the cloud have achieved great success in the consumer Internet era, but their progress in the industrial Internet seems to be somewhat difficult.

For example, Meituan is a one-stop service e-commerce company centered on food. Meituan is undoubtedly successful in the consumer Internet era. Although it has enough businesses, its core business resources are merchant resources. Therefore, its positioning in the industrial InternetIt focuses more on [empowering] merchants. Helping merchants improve operational efficiency through digitization in cash registers, cargo management, etc. This is also based on its own genetic layout. It only provides B-end digital services within the scope of its business capabilities, and its own pattern is already too small. Many other companies that have announced their efforts in the industrial Internet in recent times are doing something similar.

It can be seen that Xiangzhuang's sword dance is aimed at Peigong, the cloud plan is the appetizer, and the industrial Internet is the biggest cake. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Baidu Cloud are actually the keys to BAT's attempts to open the door to the industrial Internet.

BAT’s tacit understanding is a sign, and the giants’ consensus insights into the future are the truth.

The mobile Internet has TMD, but the cloud era may have TMD "Plus"

In the past, from the PC Internet to the mobile Internet, BAT directly or indirectly dominated the rise of almost all Internet fields during this period, and was once scolded as the "bad BAT". Of course, everything is unexpected. TMD is the three companies that have emerged under BAT's nose. Toutiao is confronting Tencent, Meituan is challenging Alibaba, and Didi may have a lower voice. This may be closely related to the twists and turns of the past year, but this cannot deny its success.

So in the cloud era, will BAT still dominate? Will there be a company like TMD? In the view of the Internet Jianghu (VIPIT1) team, BAT, especially AT, still has a high status, but it is too early to say whether it will dominate, because the new track may incubate companies that are larger and more vocal than TMD.

The domestic cloud service market can be roughly divided into the Internet camp and the IT camp. In the past, traditional IT hardware manufacturers developed cloud computing during the transformation period, and most of the results were unsatisfactory. Many people attribute the reason to hardware genetic issues and the lack of scenario advantages and data advantages of Internet companies. This is the case when Cisco, the big brother of traditional IT vendors, announced its withdrawal from the public cloud market just two years after entering the public cloud market.

In fact, it is not just IT manufacturers that have problems, BAT also has its own development difficulties.

From the perspective of industry characteristics, in the era of consumer Internet, BAT can start with a single point as a breakthrough, and then gradually explore a suitable business model. This set of models has been tried and tested repeatedly, and it is no exaggeration to call it a "snake oil". However, this set of logic does not work in the enterprise-level market, because both cloud services emphasize the technology provider's in-depth understanding of the enterprise's industrial chain, from databases to big data accumulation, operation and maintenance, to front-end frameworks. Different industries and even different enterprises have their own personalized needs.

Cloud services actually upgrade the data and systems of traditional industries through cloud services, but every industry has its own deep-rooted industrial chain. It is actually not a separate problem, but a problem of the entire ecosystem of the industry. Providing power to the organization means starting from multiple links. Only in this way can the industrial value chain achieve the [chain effect] of upgrading, This is the key to the success of the "cloud plan". From finance to agriculture, from transportation to medical care, from government to the media, they are all subject to this truth.

In addition, software does not develop out of thin air. It must run on various hardware foundations. Computers and smartphones must have existed first before the current richclient and APP. The development of software is inseparable from the support of hardware, and this may be BAT's shortcomings, but also an opportunity for the IT department to develop and rise.

Forrester, a global authoritative consulting and service organization, officially released the "Now Tech: Public Cloud Development Platforms In China, Q2 2018" report, which shows that in addition to Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud and Inspur Cloud have also been included in the "large vendor" camp. In addition, there is also Kingsoft Cloud, which is backed by Xiaomi. These three companies have a high probability of becoming "TMD" in the cloud market.

For example, Huawei Cloud was launched relatively late, but its development speed is indeed obvious. Huawei, which in the past only had the label of a hardware manufacturer, already has a strong technical gene, and Huawei Cloud seems to have enjoyed a lot of support in terms of internal resources; For example, Inspur ranks among the top three in the world in terms of server sales. It is a shortcut to export its own cloud services based on hardware; Kingsoft Cloud is positioned as a basic cloud platform, following the path of "vertical focus", and also taking a "small but beautiful" path.

In fact, the enterprise-level market is different from the consumer Internet era. It requires not only "doing it", but also "doing it well". This may require relevant companies to possess a variety of complex conditions such as manufacturing genes, supply chain management genes, and technology genes. Whether it is the Internet department or the IT department, both have their own advantages and major shortcomings. This is why so far, no public cloud vendor can take all. Therefore, it is becoming more and more common for BAT to put down its posture and cooperate with the IT department. The future of both the cloud and the industrial Internet actually requires multiple forces to work together to accelerate the iteration of technology, the formulation of standards, and the development of more segmented business scenario services.

Under the new track, compared with TMD in the consumer Internet era, these IT manufacturers are very likely to become the "Plus version" of TMD. But is this what BAT wants to see? Let's leave the answer to time.

[Source: TMTpost Media Author: Liu Zhigang]