In the battle of the cloud in 2022, the big factories shuffled.

Author/Xue, author of Caijing Tianxia Weekly

Editor/Dong Yuqing

When you click on the screen and take a photo of a product, with a flick of your finger, the data behind it has been transmitted to the data center, creating new demands. This commodity will reach you after the steps of warehouse packaging, logistics transportation and delivery to home.

When e-commerce rewrites modern people's shopping methods, few people think that what is hidden behind this is actually a huge accumulation of information and data.

Cloud computing technology has played an important role in it. The journey of cloud computing has begun since Oracle Bone Inscriptions Company put forward "network computer" in 1990s. After 2002, Google, IBM, Amazon and other Silicon Valley manufacturers started cloud computing in order to provide search services in the cloud, * * * enjoyed document services and established website hosting services for businesses.

In the past 20 years, cloud computing has become the second curve for global technology companies to support their performance development, and the domestic cloud computing market has also developed from the initial billion to the current 100 billion scale. As early as around 20 10, cloud vendors such as Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud entered this new market one after another under the imagination of hundreds of billions.

In fact, JD.COM has never stopped exploring the cloud market. 20 1 1 Liu saw in Forbes magazine that Dropbox, which was founded only four years ago, has attracted 50 million users and its valuation is extremely high. Then he had the idea of making a personal cloud disk. "We haven't made any money in e-commerce for so many years. This kind of network disk business is very popular and growing rapidly. Shall we try? "

But jingdong cloud's action is relatively slow. Until 20 18, several major head manufacturers started price wars, and jingdong cloud lost the opportunity to overtake in corners.

In May, 20021,JD.COM Science and Technology Group was formally established, which was formed by the merger of jingdong cloud and AI Division and JD.COM Mathematics Division. Gao Liqiang, former global vice president of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, was appointed as the president of jingdong cloud Business Group. Since then, its significance and positioning have risen again-it has become an important window for JD.COM Group's industrial Internet capability export, and jingdong cloud has also become a unified brand for its technical capability export.

For JD.COM today, jingdong cloud is still of great significance. On July 13, with the convening of the New jingdong cloud Summit, the slogan "The next stop of digital industry is digital intelligent supply chain" put forward by it also made jingdong cloud's strategic goal more clear.

JD.COM, Ali, Tencent, Huawei and Baidu are once again diamond cut diamond in the field of cloud computing. Will the war on the clouds open a new chapter this time?

A more efficient era

For jingdong cloud at the beginning, how to fight the next battle after missing the opportunity has always been a question.

At the end of 2020, the executives of JD.COM Science and Technology sat together and held a strategy meeting, and this question was also answered. Jingdong cloud has found a new differentiated position-to be a cloud that understands the industry better. With such an identity tag, combined with years of complex industry experience, jingdong cloud has put forward a clearer direction this year, that is, "the next stop of industrial digitalization is digital intelligent supply chain".

What is a digital intelligent supply chain? This is an abstract concept. In JD. COM seems to be a kind of thinking to promote the digital transformation of the industry. "The traditional supply chain will still be an integral part of the digital intelligent supply chain, and the two are not a relationship of replacement and subversion. The digital intelligent supply chain uses digital intelligent technology to connect and optimize all aspects of social production, circulation and service, reduce social costs and improve social efficiency. "

Cao Peng, Senior Vice President of JD.COM Group and Chairman of the Technical Committee of JD.COM Group, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that up to now, most industries have completed "informatization", and the second step is so-called digitalization, that is, to further improve production efficiency on the basis of informatization. "You can regard JD.COM as a representative of the digitalization of the retail industry."

Now, the efficiency needs to be further improved, so there is a digital intelligent supply chain.

This is the integration of a series of technologies around the upstream and downstream of the entire industrial chain. It is based on user behavior analysis and big data processing, including sales forecasting, automatic information capture and other dimensions. At the same time, it needs to connect with the systems of merchants and suppliers, and can realize systematic technologies such as warehouse automation production, distribution, warehouse network planning and scheduling.

To realize this technology, a lot of data calculation and storage are needed, and cloud technology will naturally come in handy.

JD.COM used to have the theory of "Ten Sugarcanes", that is, the whole retail industry is divided into ten links: creativity, design, R&D, manufacturing, pricing, marketing, trading, warehousing, distribution and after-sales, of which the first five belong to brands and the last five to retailers. "The digital intelligence supply chain is to get through ten sugar cane. We hope to help (cooperative) enterprises in JD.COM achieve a triangular balance of cost, income and experience. " Gao Liqiang, vice president of JD.COM Group and president of jingdong cloud Business Group, expressed this.

But why this year? In jingdong cloud's judgment, in today's business environment, the traditional scale and intelligent investment efficiency is not high, and the industry needs more acute response ability to quickly respond to users' needs.

Just like at the beginning of this year, epidemics in Shanghai, Beijing and other places have been repeated, and cities have set off a wave of grabbing food and hoarding goods. This temporary and regional surge in orders has greatly increased the difficulty of supply chain performance. Learning from experience, JD.COM began to adopt hierarchical early warning and monitoring system, which divided the operation of supply chain into different levels and started different supply chain planning to facilitate the fastest performance scheduling.

It can be said that in the environment of outstanding uncertainty, society has put forward higher requirements for the supply chain. JD。 The narrow victory of COM lies in this intelligent supply chain capability.

Now in JD. COM believes that the scale of single-point digital intelligence has reached its limit. "The digital intelligent supply chain can be upgraded through the whole link of the industry, expand the social scale of digital intelligence, improve the production efficiency of the whole society, and reshape the global competitiveness for the industry."

Digital intelligent supply chain has therefore become the next stop of industrial digitalization.

Born in JD.COM, Wang Ye sees the world.

Being able to put forward the theory of digital intelligent supply chain has something to do with JD.COM. COM's own practice.

If we look at JD, COM's previous financial reports, its latest inventory turnover days have reached 30.2 days. More importantly, it manages more than 6.5438+million SKUs, serves 580 million consumers, and realizes the logistics turnover of about 6.5438+0.400 warehouses in more than 470 counties and cities and the minute delivery of users. This scheduling is the highest in the industry.

19 years' experience and development enabled JD.COM to refine this systematic ability and finally export it in the opposite direction. Therefore, intelligent supply chain has become a new answer for JD.COM to realize industrial digitalization.

In this context, JD.COM Group can be regarded as the best customer representative in jingdong cloud. By improving this cloud capability, JD.COM was once in an invincible position in major battles. But now, more technical capabilities have landed in the form of products or solutions and are exported to other partners in the industry.

In digital procurement, enterprises want to buy, first of all, they must see the information of goods, which requires electronic bidding, supplier management, category management and so on. Another example is collaborative research and development. R&D personnel should not be allowed to design products behind closed doors according to their own life experience and knowledge accumulation, but should know what consumers want most, and then integrate their needs into research and development. Now JD.COM has reached such C2M collaborative research and development with more than 1000 enterprises.

Even in the manufacturing industry which is difficult to transform digitally, the digital intelligence brought by jingdong cloud is exerting its power.

In the past, factories were closed and managed separately, and the production tasks were heavy and light. The machine didn't know when it was busy and idle, and it needed to be plugged in 24 hours. And the machine itself has many processes, some are always busy and some are always idle. In this state of industrial capacity, manufacturers want factories to produce a product, and machinery and equipment are running at full capacity, and the cost is often high.

"It can be said that what JD.COM has done is to use technology to build a platform for brand manufacturers to find the factory that best matches his cost, because I know where it is idle. If it is idle, the cost will definitely be low," Gao Liqiang said, matching supply and demand, which is part of intelligent manufacturing.

The most typical example is the virtual intelligence factory made by JD.COM in Changzhou, Jiangsu. In this industrial belt, JD.COM has managed all the equipment of nearly 400 factories with industrial internet, and the system knows best how much production capacity there is in each link and process of the factory's molding and forging. JD.COM showed this information to brand manufacturers. When brand manufacturers want to produce a certain product, they can directly contact the factory with the best cost.

According to the disclosure, by the end of 20021,the super virtual factory has successfully docked more than 30,000 equipments from more than 300 factories in the region, successfully digested a large amount of excess capacity, and directly promoted more than 2,000 jobs. Taking Changzhou Gree Bo Company as an example, relying on the "super virtual factory", a new product of washing and dragging machine was developed rapidly, and the existing production line was intelligently transformed to create a new brand of "One Core Home". The new product of washing and dragging machine has received more than 50 thousand orders in just a few months, and the sales volume is expected to reach 65.438+0.2 billion yuan.

In the automobile industry, BAIC Group is also one of the practices in jingdong cloud. With the help of jingdong cloud's cloudy unified management capability, BAIC has realized the unified management and unified operation and maintenance of 1 public cloud, 1 private cloud and two OpenStack platforms, and completed the opening and integration of basic resources of BAIC Group. All resources can be flexibly deployed on a unified platform to ensure mutual isolation and safe access, and * * * enjoy resources on the cloud.

As a result, BAIC has realized the unified utilization of IDC resources of several secondary subsidiaries, obtained the resource pooling ability without purchasing hardware, and successfully saved 50% of IT costs.

He Fei dairy industry is also a representative. Based on the underlying technical support provided by jingdong cloud, relying on the warehouse management system and control system provided by Jingdong Logistics, combined with a variety of intelligent warehouse equipment and innovative technologies, He Fei has realized a highly automated and intelligent warehouse operation mode with higher efficiency and lower cost.

Outside JD.COM, jingdong cloud's capabilities are bearing fruit in all walks of life. According to the disclosure, jingdong cloud has set foot in retail, city, finance, manufacturing, transportation, energy and other fields. At the same time, jingdong cloud has established six industrial clouds: urban cloud, financial cloud, traffic cloud, manufacturing cloud, retail cloud and energy cloud, and jingdong cloud has always been the only export brand.

Will it stir up the cloud market structure?

According to Gartner's statistics, in 20021year, Amazon ranked first in the global IaaS market for cloud computing, and Alibaba Cloud remained the leader in the domestic IaaS market for cloud computing. Jingdong cloud's market share of public cloud IaaS in China is 6.6%, ranking behind Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud.

In terms of income. In 20021year, the operating income of Amazon AWS cloud computing business reached $62.202 billion, up 37. 1% year-on-year. In fiscal year 2022 (up to March 3, 2022, 3 1), the revenue of Ali's Alibaba Cloud business was100/kloc-0.80 billion yuan, up by 2 1% year-on-year. JD.COM has not disclosed the relevant performance data of jingdong cloud in the financial report.

Opponents are always fighting for it. Alibaba Cloud and Huawei Cloud moved frequently after entering 2022, and reorganized the cloud business architecture for different sub-sectors. Alibaba Cloud has set up 18 industry departments by imitating ICT enterprises, while Huawei Cloud has set up special groups according to different industry legions. Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud all released chips related to cloud computing.

However, although the current market structure is relatively stable, it is not unbreakable. In the eyes of the industry, after all, there are not many technical barriers to cloud business and low customer loyalty.

In the turbulent cloud market, what should jingdong cloud take to stir up the next market structure?

At present, its biggest selling point is technology. Among them, Cloud Ship, True Cloud, King Kong, Sea of Clouds, and MCDN self-developed technology newly mentioned in this meeting are all key layouts.

Cloud ship was an idea when it was born, but as a cloud ship with PaaS technology, it has made great progress this year. Cao Peng told Caijing World Weekly that as a hybrid cloud operating system, the compatibility of cloud ships has been significantly improved within one year. "When the cloud ship was first launched, it was only compatible with two or three mainstream cloud platforms. Now after a year of adaptation, it is basically compatible with the top ten public and private cloud platforms in the world. "

Secondly, in order to better support the deployment of customers' applications in cloudy days, the cloud ship has polished the cloudy day migration plan more, and the cloudy day lively plan has become more mature and stable. "We have also done more cases of migration implementation, and have more successful experiences to ensure that customers' applications can run on cloudy days and migrate smoothly on cloudy days. These are all successful cases. "

The openness of cloud ships is still increasing, not only as a "mother ship", but also to help enterprises open up multiple cloud resources and attract many partners to join. "In the past year, the cloud ship and the 16 cloud application on the market have been well adapted, and many partners are willing to put their own components on the cloud ship. For them, there is an advantage. As long as they are adapted to the cloud ship, they can be deployed on cloudy days. They don't need to do it one by one, so they are willing to cooperate with us. "

This open attitude is also becoming a major feature of jingdong cloud.

According to jingdong cloud's observation, in the past, many enterprises bought all kinds of cloud services while going online, and large enterprises made a tender for each system. Cao Peng told Caijing Tianxia Weekly, for example, "A banking system may have bought a cloud in its online lending system, a cloud in its risk control system and a lot of clouds. Each application corresponds to a cloud below. It seems that this enterprise is a cloudy system. But in fact, the underlying resources and capabilities between these applications, including data, are isolated and not open. "

What jingdong cloud is doing is to create "true cloudy", allowing enterprises to flexibly schedule among different cloud resources, maximize resource utilization, and solve the so-called problem of binding suppliers and operators.

"Otherwise, a system and your core related applications are placed on a specific cloud, and once the price of cloud services rises, you still can't negotiate with it," Cao Peng said.

True cloudization is the design direction pursued by jingdong cloud Ship. "If this is done well, it will actually have a positive impact on the industry, because if everyone can only use each cloud by themselves, the efficiency is very low. The real cloudization is actually a collection of resources after unified management and a collection of social resources, "Gao Liqiang also said.

At this point, jingdong cloud's distinctive brand has emerged. If other cloud vendors still take market share as their competitive goal, then jingdong cloud is becoming an irreplaceable cloud based on its unique supply chain experience and industrial demand.

"In today's cloud market in China, jingdong cloud is the most open cloud, and it is really cloudy," Gao Liqiang said. For JD.COM, it is neither capital nor necessary to burn money everywhere to build a data center. Managing multiple clouds in a unified way is what It wants to do.

Jingdong cloud's technical logic always revolves around cost efficiency. In the past, the retail industry needed to store a lot of things and consumed a lot of clouds. In addition, in recent years, short video, long video, live broadcast and other forms have put forward higher requirements for storage efficiency. In different regions and different edge nodes, users should enjoy Internet content smoothly, which also puts forward higher requirements for the efficiency of content distribution.

Based on this background, jingdong cloud released MCDN self-developed technology, as a hybrid CDN service, which has 654.38+0.0000+own CDN node resources covering the whole world, mixed scheduling, content preset and distribution strategy. It can improve the quality of network acceleration such as video on demand, live broadcast, application distribution and game download, and significantly reduce the use cost. Make full use of massive edge node resources, greatly reduce the content distribution cost, and achieve 50% cost savings.

According to this logic, jingdong cloud has undoubtedly become a catfish that stirs up the ecology of the industry. Especially when the industry enters a new era of pursuing high-quality growth, jingdong cloud's thinking will undoubtedly gain a more practical survival position in the industry. The data is a more direct proof. According to Gao Liqiang, in the past year, jingdong cloud achieved a high growth rate of over 1 10%.

In the fierce and cruel battle for cloud vendors, JD.COM takes "social efficiency" as the fundamental logic, which is why he can tear the corner of cloud computing again.