On August 27, Tianjin SASAC issued the implementation plan on accelerating the cloud work of state-owned enterprises and improving the construction of state-owned assets cloud system. The content of the scheme requires that enterprises have deployed information systems on third-party public cloud platforms (such as "Huawei cloud", "Alibaba cloud", "Tencent cloud", "woyun", "Tianyi cloud" and "mobile cloud"), all of which shall be migrated to state-owned cloud within 2 months from the expiration date of the lease. In principle, the cloud computing migration shall be completed by September 30, 2022 at the latest.

As soon as the news came out, the whole IT investment circle, manufacturers and media circle immediately caused an uproar. What are the considerations for the introduction of the policy? In this business era where enterprises pursue profits, how are cloud manufacturers exploring? With such questions, we gradually uncover the new business logic of cloud manufacturers from the past of the first half of the year.

Business "new exploration" behind the pursuit of profit

So far, all major cloud manufacturers have announced the financial results for the first half of 2021. Globally, the net sales of Q2 and AWS reached US $14.809 billion, a year-on-year increase of 37%; Azure increased by 51%; Google's cloud revenue was US $4.628 billion, a year-on-year increase of 53.91%.

In China, Alibaba cloud, a cloud computing giant, adjusted its EBITA profit to 340 million yuan in Q2, realizing three consecutive quarters of profits, giving confidence to the whole industry. From its establishment in 2009 to its profitability, Alibaba cloud has taken 12 years and AWS has taken a full decade.

Now looking back, Amazon and Alibaba have the same business track in the early stage of cloud business development, and their playing methods have many similarities. They all start from enterprise needs, make products that meet customer needs, and continue to their cloud computing business.

Moreover, the revenue structures of AWS and Alibaba cloud are basically similar. They are mainly IAAs business, supplemented by PAAS business. So far, Alibaba cloud has adopted the model of tied sales with the cloud in the PAAS layer tool sales. If customers want to buy Alibaba cloud PAAS tools, they must purchase Alibaba cloud IAAs resources together.

In terms of business choice, because the general-purpose type is the strongest, the cloud storage resources in IAAs layer are the products that can sell at the best price. As long as the customer scale comes up, the marginal benefit will increase immediately; Because PAAS and SaaS involve specific scenarios of different enterprise businesses, they often need customized development, the transaction cycle is lengthened, and the delivery cost is greatly increased.

In addition, unlike the United States, before the mobile Internet, the United States has cultivated a mature b-end software and hardware market and fed a large number of software enterprises including Oracle, IBM and SAP. The most successful technology enterprises in China in the past 20 years are almost all Internet companies for C-end users.

Therefore, developing IAAs first in China and then cutting into PAAS and SaaS naturally become the first choice of most enterprises.

Unlike AWS and Alibaba cloud, azure adopts the development model of SaaS advantage and gradual downward penetration, constantly squeezing the plate of AWS IAAs business. Now the revenue growth rate is much higher than AWS, and the revenue of PAAS and SaaS of azure accounts for more than 60%. The revenue growth of Google cloud also surpassed AWS after Q4 2018.

In the view of users, IAAs business is more to reduce costs, and PAAS and SaaS are to improve revenue. If we want to change the inherent structure of enterprises, the motivation to improve revenue should be far ahead of reducing costs. From the current market feedback, the success of Microsoft azure has verified the feasibility of this truth. Therefore, Microsoft has successfully transformed and become the second technology enterprise in the world by market value.

In the process of upward exploration, AWS has improved the ecological circle of cloud services by attracting a large number of SaaS developers to settle in because it has no SaaS services. Exploring SaaS software cooperation and creating a perfect ecosystem has become the development strategy that Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud have been firmly implementing. Over the years, Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud have invested in a large number of upstream and downstream enterprises (such as qiniu cloud and shumeng factory invested by Alibaba, lingque cloud invested by Tencent, etc.) to constantly make up for technical products and enrich the ecological circle.

It also constantly adjusts its strategy to form a complete set of playing methods. In June last year, Alibaba cloud put forward the "cloud nailing in one" strategy. By the end of March this year, the total number of nail applications had exceeded one million, nearly doubling in three months, of which low code applications had increased by nearly 380000 in three months. Tencent cloud builds its own cloud ecosystem by relying on wechat and applet.

In China, in addition to Alibaba cloud and Tencent, the cloud business statements of the three major operators this year are also particularly eye-catching. According to the financial report, in the first half of the year, the revenue of Tianyi cloud reached 14 billion yuan, exceeding the total revenue of 2020, with a year-on-year increase of 109.3%; Mobile cloud revenue reached 9.721 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 118.1%, exceeding the annual revenue in 2020, and the share of public cloud revenue ranked among the top ten in the industry; China Unicom's cloud revenue increased by 54.1% year-on-year to 7.69 billion yuan.

Industry insiders previously interpreted this as the momentum before the listing of a shares of the three major operators. However, the market did not buy it. After a 35% rise on the first day of China Telecom's A-share listing, it ushered in four consecutive falls, including two limit falls. Although China Telecom has been deeply engaged in the field of cloud computing for more than ten years and has made brilliant achievements, for a long time, the external image of "plumber" and weak software capability have failed to play their due role in this key node of listing.

Security considerations behind the establishment of "state owned assets cloud"

It is undeniable that some enterprises ignore the lowest social value while blindly pursuing profits. In the first half of the year, the twists and turns of Didi's IPO in the United States and the recent disclosure of user registration information by Alibaba cloud made people gradually realize the importance of data security and personal privacy protection.

According to the contents of Didi's prospectus, Didi has 377 million annual active users and 13 million annual active drivers in China. In the first quarter of 2021, Didi's China travel has 156 million monthly active users, and the average daily transaction volume of China's travel business is 25 million times. According to the statistics of the national online car Hailing supervision information interaction platform, in October last year, the national online car Hailing orders totaled 630 million, and the orders of didi platform were 562 million.

The largest shareholders of didi are Softbank and Uber of the United States. The founder of Didi, Cheng Wei, accounts for only 7% of the shares, and the real decision-making power is not in our hands. Didi's listing was strictly investigated at a glance. After this incident, the government continuously issued various policies to strengthen the supervision and protection of government, enterprise and personal data.

On July 10, the Internet Information Office issued the network security review measures (Revised Draft for comments), which will play a leading role in the overseas listing of Chinese enterprises; On August 17, the regulations on security protection of key information infrastructure was adopted at the 133rd executive meeting of the State Council and will be officially implemented as of September 1 this year; On August 20, the personal information protection law of the people's Republic of China was adopted at the 30th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress of the people's Republic of China and will come into force as of November 1 this year; On the same day, the five ministries and commissions jointly issued several provisions on automobile data security management (for Trial Implementation), which will be officially implemented from October 1 this year.

In retrospect, combined with the current international environment, the massive personal information data on Lenovo didi platform and the disclosure of user registration information by Alibaba cloud, it is not difficult for us to understand the original intention of establishing state-owned cloud in Tianjin recently.

In fact, long before Tianjin, the construction of state-owned cloud projects in Sichuan and Zhejiang has begun. Zhejiang Province started the construction of state-owned cloud project in March this year, making it clear that HANGGANG, which is controlled by Zhejiang SASAC, will undertake the construction, maintenance and operation of state-owned cloud IDC room in Zhejiang Province. PAAS layer public cloud manufacturers will enable the construction of state-owned cloud platform through technical means.

In this regard, Guotai Junan computer team shared their views. The construction of state-owned assets cloud will promote the acceleration of industry information innovation. State owned assets cloud and Xinchuang cloud actually strengthen the data security of state-owned enterprises from the perspectives of capital and technology. State owned assets cloud requires the computer room and data to be mastered by state-owned assets, while Xinchuang cloud technically reduces back door vulnerabilities. At present, it is unrealistic for Xinchuang cloud to directly carry the business systems of all state-owned enterprises, so there may be two ways to promote state-owned assets cloud and Xinchuang cloud in the future. However, no matter which mode, the Informatization Transformation of follow-up it technology facilities and business systems of state-owned enterprises is the general trend, which will accelerate the development of industrial Xinchuang.

According to such a development logic, at present, the state-owned assets cloud reflects a certain theme investment attribute. IDC manufacturers with state-owned assets background, head general information manufacturers and head information makers with a good customer base of government and state-owned enterprises will usher in good news. As the three major operators of central enterprises, pure domestic software and hardware manufacturers and chip enterprises will usher in greater development space.

Government cloud becomes the next new battlefield

Following the dividend of cloud in the Internet industry, cloud service providers are looking for new tracks. The market scale of industrial digitization is four times that of digital industrialization, which makes the cloud market of traditional industries such as government affairs more favored by capital. According to statistics, China's Government cloud market grew rapidly in 2020, with a scale of 65.36 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.3%. Government cloud naturally becomes the next focus of competition among cloud manufacturers.

Unlike the pan Internet industry, traditional areas such as government affairs require cloud manufacturers not only to deliver standard products, but also to provide project-based service capabilities, understand business and processes, and emphasize on-line service capabilities at all times, rather than product-based or general-purpose platforms. From several government cloud related reports recently released by IDC, it is not difficult to see that Huawei, Inspur and China Telecom have occupied the first camp.

Since 2021, the heads of these cloud computing enterprises have paid intensive visits to local government leaders. Moreover, the company has upgraded its internal organizational structure to provide more sinking and gathering services for government enterprises, finance, medical and other industries.

According to media reports, from the end of December last year to June this year, Xu Zhijun, Hu houkun and Guo Pinglun, the three rotating chairmen of Huawei, respectively, paid intensive visits from the northernmost Heilongjiang, Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan in the west, Hubei in the middle and Hunan and Yunnan in the south. It is understood that Alibaba cloud executives or relevant principals also visited the main leaders of Henan, Anhui, Shanxi, Fujian, Yunnan, Hubei and other provinces and some cities in the same period.

At the Alibaba cloud summit in May this year, Zhang Jianfeng, President of Alibaba cloud intelligence, focused on the "good service" strategy, and announced that he would comprehensively serve government and enterprise customers and complete a new round of organizational adjustment. First, he established 18 industry departments to make industry digital innovation; Second, general managers of 16 branches were appointed to be responsible for localization operations in 16 regions, including establishing connections with local customers and establishing localization ecology.

Tencent cloud is faster and more low-key. In mid May, Tencent also changed the organizational structure of the CSIG business group where Tencent cloud is located. Tang Daosheng is the CEO of Tencent CSIG business group and Qiu Yunpeng is the COO. In the industry market of Tencent cloud, Qiu Yunpeng is still responsible for the two best industries of government and finance.

Huawei has made a more detailed structural adjustment from the end of 2019, and subdivided the government business into several organizations, one by one corresponding to national ministries and commissions, such as the customs, the Ministry of water resources, the State Administration for Industry and commerce, etc. These vertical industries themselves are vertical direct management methods. For example, the water conservancy department has the Ministry of water resources at the top, the provincial water conservancy department and the Municipal Water Conservancy Bureau. Huawei uses this to establish a corresponding organizational structure from top to bottom. Some people go to the headquarters and some representative offices respond.

Since last year, Huawei has also appointed a large number of city general managers to manage regions and counties. Under this model, Huawei has gradually found its way into the industry, and the business revenue of government and enterprises has increased from more than 9 billion a few years ago to 17 billion in 2020.

Since 2012, Huawei cloud has served more than 600 government cloud projects. From 230 + in 2017 to 600 + in May 2021, the number of Huawei cloud government cloud projects has increased by 260% in just a few years, including 38 national ministerial projects, 40 provincial / municipal projects, and more than 530 municipal and county government and Commission Bureau projects.

In the government cloud market, Inspur cloud is currently the most qualified to compete with Huawei cloud. Up to now, Inspur cloud has built the largest distributed cloud system in China, covering 288 distributed cloud nodes. Based on the unified opscenter, Inspur cloud has realized continuous iterative upgrading; It serves 245 provincial and municipal governments, 20000 government departments and 1.28 million enterprises in China, and has the service capacity of 16 categories, more than 200 products and 10000 business scenarios.

As an operator, China Telecom is not only a central enterprise, but also the largest IDC service provider in China, with rich infrastructure resources. By the end of 2020, the total number of IDC racks has exceeded 420000, 80% of which are deployed in four economically developed regions, and the national average rack utilization rate has reached 70%. At present, Tianyi cloud has undertaken to build 16 provincial government cloud platforms nationwide, covering 130 prefectures and cities, and built more than 1000 smart city projects.

China Mobile, which is about to be listed on domestic A shares, is also accelerating the layout of government affairs, smart city, traditional enterprise transformation, finance and other fields. In the first half of 2021, the number of government and enterprise customers of China Mobile reached 15.53 million, with a net increase of 1.69 million. The market revenue of government enterprises maintained rapid growth, reaching 73.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.4%. At present, China Mobile has provided government cloud platform services for 14 provincial governments and more than 100 Prefecture and municipal governments《 According to the 2020 government cloud service operation Market Research Report, mobile cloud has ranked among the top, occupying the third market share.

Looking back at the whole first half of the year, from Alibaba cloud's profits for three consecutive quarters, to the supervision of national security policies, and then to the new battlefield of government cloud, cloud enterprises have moved forward from the stage of simply winning by scale to the principle of profit as the king. From IAAs to PAAS to SaaS, cloud enterprises are not exploring the business operation logic to maximize profits, and are looking for greater business opportunities in traditional tracks such as government cloud based on security.