SaaS ecology, a hard bone

The 2020 epidemic is like a catalyst for the digital transformation of enterprises, and the ToB market has also ushered in a small climax, especially the SaaS market. According to data from iiMedia Research, the global SaaS market will be USD 127.7 billion in 2020.
After all, it is the big cake of the 100 billion SaaS market. Everyone wants to taste it. It is not unexpected that Internet giants are attracted to the SaaS business.
The giants who are proficient in the ToC market "change careers" to become ToB, it is difficult to answer whether it is pros or cons. So, what is the strategy of each SaaS ecosystem? Is the SaaS ecosystem a good business for giants? What are the difficulties for giants to do SaaS ecosystem?
1. Giant's SaaS ecological game
Although the SaaS ecosystem has been very popular in the past two years, the establishment of the SaaS ecosystem is still in the early stages of the companies that have entered the game and the entire ToB industry.
A relatively mature SaaS ecosystem can theoretically aggregate all SaaS vendors on one platform, just like Apple's AppStore. The software developed by the manufacturer is divided into various service tracks such as finance, human resources, collaboration, and marketing, and each subdivision track has a clear modular layout.
This business model extends from the AppStore to the ToB industry, and it is still promising. However, building a SaaS ecosystem requires not only to gather vendors together, but also to ensure that various vendors are interconnected, including data and business, and the business logic is not as simple as the AppStore.
The true SaaS ecosystem is not only limited to the ToB field, but also involves a large number of ToG and ToC businesses. When we sorted out the basic logic for the giants to build the SaaS ecosystem, we found that everyone did the same thing:
Ali:
Alibaba Cloud + DingTalk + SaaS partner Tencent: Tencent Cloud + Enterprise WeChat + SaaS partner
Huawei: Huawei Cloud + WeLink+SaaS partners
The three parts of building a SaaS ecosystem are juxtaposed and indispensable from the point of view of importance; from the point of view of function, they are in a pyramid structure.
From the perspective of time, the giants building a SaaS ecosystem is by no means an overnight task. Since the development of the domestic SaaS ecosystem is still in its early stages, no one knows where the SaaS ecosystem will eventually go, and everyone is crossing the river by feeling the stones.
If you want to cross the river more safely, you need bigger and flat stones. These stones are the lowest-level technologies such as cloud computing, AI, and blockchain, and serve as the foundation and pillar in the construction of the SaaS ecosystem.
However, the landing effect of these underlying technologies is still not very obvious, and market awareness and recognition need to be improved. All this requires the giants to patience and invest a lot of time and money.
The giants also understand that it seems unwise to seek quick success in the ToB industry, and it is possible to catch the big fish by putting a long line. Thus, there are actions such as Alibaba Cloud's three-year investment of 200 billion yuan, Tencent's five-year investment of 500 billion yuan, and Baidu All in AI to increase the investment in the underlying computing power of AI new infrastructure.
The establishment of a SaaS ecosystem requires not only a platform, but also players. How can this card be played without a player? SaaS vendors are the cards in the hands of the giants, and the size of the cards directly determines the winners or losers.
In order to attract more SaaS vendors to join their ecosystem, giants try to achieve their goals with a series of strategies and plans. For example, Alibaba Cloud's "integrated" strategy, Tencent's SaaS ecosystem "Thousand Sails Plan" and Huawei Cloud's "cloud" plan. Not long ago, HUAWEI CLOUD launched its SaaS application support plan. The first batch of 1,000 SaaS applications will be supported, and each application will receive up to 200,000 yuan of cloud resources.
No matter how large a company is, it will never be possible to do it in all industries, but capable companies can connect all industries. The most important thing to build a SaaS ecosystem is to connect vendors and companies. With the cards, the next step for the giants is how to group the cards, that is, how to better combine and arrange these cards to achieve the effect of one plus one greater than two.
When Tencent announced the SaaS ecosystem "Thousand Sails Plan" last year, it said that breaking the phenomenon of SaaS data islands and realizing data and account interoperability between SaaS are the original intention of the plan. Because only by connecting each SaaS and connecting each vendor behind the SaaS, can these brands be better arranged and combined to achieve the effect of one plus one greater than two.
However, the concept is very good, how is the concrete implementation? Has the business of SaaS vendors that joined the ecosystem increased? Are the products of each company truly interconnected? For these issues, "ToB industry headlines" put a question mark here.
But one thing is certain, the giants entering the SaaS ecosystem may "disturb" the entire ToB, ToC, and ToG market. The giants' SaaS ecological battle has just begun. This war affects the future layout of the giants, affects the majority of ToB practitioners, and affects tens of millions of SaaS vendors.
2 Why is the bone of the SaaS ecology not easy to chew?
(1). Without the ToB gene, people will be regarded as "outsiders".
Companies like Alibaba and Huawei that started the ToB business are considered by the market to have a natural ToB gene. And like Tencent, which started as a socialist, "APP Workshop" ByteDance is regarded as an "outside man" without the ToB gene.
Does it matter whether there is a ToB gene? From the perspective of "ToB Industry Headlines", ToB genes have a strong correlation with the company's service and sales capabilities.
Sales ability is essential in the ToB business field. When people are not familiar with SaaS products or even ToB business, how to make users perceive and enjoy the functions of the product is a big test for companies with inexperienced sales.
Enterprise service capability is a more important point. The first is the ability to coordinate the SaaS ecosystem partners; the second is the ability to serve platform users.
If a company wants to build a SaaS ecosystem, it must jump out of the comfort zone of doing business before, abandon the previous concept of going it alone, and truly work with other vendors to create a comprehensive SaaS ecosystem. It also involves the formulation of SaaS ecological entry standards, and the issues of data interoperability and business interoperability among SaaS ecological partners.
In addition, as the organizer of the SaaS ecosystem, once a certain manufacturer's product in the ecosystem has problems and customers have opinions, the brand image of the giant itself will ultimately be affected.
From this point of view, for giants without the ToB gene, there are indeed many hurdles to take to build a SaaS ecosystem. So do these giants have no chance of winning? Not necessarily. If you can make good use of the company's own unique advantages and reduce dimensionality, you may be able to fight your own blood.
(2). It is not enough to be willing to
spend money. In the consumer Internet era, companies pay more attention to the present, and it is not difficult to realize rapid realization by burning money circle traffic. But in the ToB market, it is not enough to be willing to spend money.
First of all, experience is not piled up by money. Some people in the industry and "ToB industry headlines" said that building a SaaS ecosystem places high demands on enterprises. It is not because of how difficult the technology is to overcome, but the need for companies to have a deep understanding of ToB business and SaaS business. Not knowing the pain points of the digital transformation of the company will only make the product more bloated and tasteless.
Secondly, providing services is not acting, and there is no NG opportunity. Previously, relevant people from hardware manufacturers and "ToB industry headlines" mentioned a common problem that Internet companies have in hardware manufacturing, and that is the importance of system bugs. "The thinking of developing software on the Internet is to develop first, and then change if there are bugs. This kind of thinking is not good for hardware development." According
to "ToB industry headlines", the same is true for ToB business. The development of software and the formulation of solutions require adequate preparatory work, and the cost of correcting problems is too high.
The high cost is mainly reflected in two aspects. On the one hand, the B-side software is not like the C-side software, which requires employees to learn and adapt. If you adopt the mentality of changing while using it, it will undoubtedly increase the labor cost of the enterprise. On the other hand, the B-side software is not so easy to change.
"The codes of most companies are messy like noodles, no one dares to move the code at will. Once a problem occurs, no one knows how to adjust it." Huang Yuncong, a 25-year veteran of B-side software, and "ToB industry headlines" said.
Therefore, when customers have customized needs, the company can only copy one more noodle code, so the more a single code is, the higher the labor cost.
In recent years, the SaaS ecology has become more and more important in people's minds, and countless companies are rushing to it. But from the current point of view, the domestic SaaS ecosystem has just started, the SaaS products are not mature enough, and the standards are not unified. The SaaS industry is still in a stage of wild growth and wild growth.
Is it difficult to build a SaaS ecosystem? difficult. It's hard to think about it. Don't do it then? Gotta do. Be cautious and optimistic, the SaaS ecosystem is a bone that is difficult for giants.