Cloud platforms, digital platforms, middle stations, third-party platforms... Many platforms have emerged on the market all of a sudden around digitalization and intelligence.
In recent years, Chinasoft.com and Haibi Research have investigated the digital development status of enterprises, especially large enterprises, and found that choosing a suitable platform for enterprise digitalization is a rigid need of many enterprises.
But a common problem they face is that there are too many platforms on the market. What exactly is a real platform? Who is the right digital platform for you?
"The digital platform in the cloud era is very complicated, and it is not easy to distinguish who is good and who is bad."
Said Shi Zhoujun, chief architect of UFIDA, who led the research and development of the business innovation platform (BIP) and was interviewed by Chinasoft.com for the platform's name.
01
Business innovation platform becomes the core
Hibi Research believes that an enterprise’s IT platform can be divided into three development stages.
The first stage is the informationization stage. At this stage, the company's demands are relatively simple, that is, to build an information platform. In order to realize the development of various enterprise applications and the integration with different application systems.
The second stage is the Internetization stage. At this stage, the demands of the enterprise began to become more complex, and its purpose was to realize the online and offline integrated development of various businesses faster and better, and to realize the e-commerce of sales. The platforms that enterprises need to build are more Internet-based platforms that satisfy e-commerce and O2O operations.
The third stage is the digital stage. At this stage, the demands of enterprises have become very complex, and their purpose is to realize online, digital, and even intelligent business management. The platform that enterprises need to build is a digital platform. What it wants to solve is not only the Internetization of sales, but also that all businesses can be online.
Companies are currently in the digital stage, and the biggest problem they encounter is how to use digital technology to innovate their business models. The rapid and continuous realization of business innovation is the core element for companies to gain competitiveness in the digital age. Therefore, in Shi Zhoujun's view, the Business Innovation Platform (BIP) is the most important platform at this stage.
BIP is a comprehensive service platform that uses a new generation of digital and intelligent technologies to realize enterprise product and business innovation, organization and management changes. The core goal of BIP is to make business innovation simple, convenient, popular and social.
Shi Zhoujun said that looking at many platforms on the market today, there are very few commercial innovation platforms in the strict sense. Most of them are pure technology platforms or platforms in a certain business field, which cannot effectively support the business innovation of enterprises.
To become a new generation of BIP, it must have four core technical architectures.
02
Four distinctive architecture groups
BIP was born to promote the deep integration of digitalization and business. On the one hand, new technologies in different technical fields are emerging one after another, on the other hand, the individual needs of enterprises to realize business innovation are urgent. Therefore, Shi Zhoujun believes that the traditional and single technical architecture cannot be adapted to the needs of diverse and complex application scenarios. For example, different platform technology fields require different technical architectures, different terminals require different technical architectures, and business systems involve the connection between internal and external customers of the enterprise, and different technical architectures are also required.
In summary, it is difficult for one technical architecture to meet the design needs of different platform fields. What BIP needs is a technical architecture group. Use different technical architectures to design different application scenarios.
Taking the YonBIP UFIDA business innovation platform launched by UFIDA as an example, Shi Zhoujun said that its greatest feature lies in its special technical architecture system. YonBIP has designed and implemented a new generation of technical architecture systems, which mainly include four architectures: cloud-native architecture, metadata-driven architecture, middle-office architecture and data-use separation architecture. That is, the "three horizontal and one vertical" of YonBIP.
Figure 1 YonBIP technical architecture system
Cloud native architecture means that YonBIP adopts micro-service-based architecture, API-based communication, container-based infrastructure, and DevOps-based integrated R&D and operation processes to achieve simple and fast application construction, easy deployment of applications, and on-demand operation of applications Retractable.
The metadata-driven architecture is one of YonBIP's core technical architectures. It designs multi-level and different types of metadata including UI metadata, domain metadata (including entities, services, rules), BI metadata, and AI metadata, as well as various runtime engines that parse these metadata. Enterprise services based on this architecture have strong flexibility and scalability, and are also the core architecture for YonBIP to achieve code-free development and ecological expansion capabilities.
The middle station architecture is the characteristic architecture of YonBIP. It provides middle-office services in various fields such as social marketing, smart procurement, smart manufacturing, smart supply chain, technology finance, smart finance, digital human resources, and social collaboration, as well as various data middle-office services that support enterprise digital and intelligent applications And intelligent middle-station services, and introduced the methodology for enterprises to build middle-station.
The data-use separation architecture is an important architecture design pattern of YonBIP. It is based on the ideas of SSOT (Single Source Of Truth) and MVOTs (Multiple Versions of the Truth), supported by the data center, and designed business services with the ideas of business dataization and data assetization , Give the data multi-level labels and multi-dimensional relationships, put the data into the lake and capitalize it, thereby breaking the constraints of the application of the data and the domain use, and realizing the separation of the data and the application. The data-use separation architecture enables data to support broader front-end scenario-based business innovation across domains, and achieve data business and data value closed loop.
The four major technical architecture groups of YonBIP respectively cover the technical infrastructure layer, the data layer, the middle-station shared service layer and the full link of vertical applications from end to data. These technical architecture systems can integrate various digital technologies with the business innovation needs of enterprises, making business innovation simple, convenient, popular, and social.
03
Two key application technologies
In addition to the four technical architecture groups, Shi Zhoujun said that YonBIP has also achieved technological innovation and breakthroughs in various platform products. Take the technology platform as an example (see Figure 2). The YonBIP technology platform is a comprehensive support platform that includes container cloud, DevOps, application management and service governance, DevOps, operation and maintenance monitoring, and adaptation of multiple IaaS products. UFIDA has developed two A cloud-native characteristic technology that supports enterprise services, that is, the distributed transaction technology YTS that supports microservices, and the intelligent monitoring system Hubble that comprehensively monitors the operation of enterprise services.
Figure 2 UFIDA YonBIP technology platform architecture
YonBIP products fully adopt the cloud-native design based on the service architecture. In order to solve the distributed transaction problem caused by microservice access, UFIDA has developed its own distributed transaction framework YTS (see Figure 3), which supports Sagas (suitable for long process scenarios) , Less transformation, easy compensation operation), TCC (suitable for high isolation, strong consistency scenarios), reliable messaging (relatively low isolation, high concurrency scenarios) and enhanced XA (suitable for short transaction scenarios) to achieve services Call and data consistency. Each technology solves the distributed transaction problem in different application scenarios, and can also be combined to meet specific application scenarios. The YTS framework can support multiple databases at the same time, including mainstream databases such as MySql, SQLServer, and Oracle, and domestic databases such as Dameng.
Figure 3 YTS technical framework
Real-time link monitoring and abnormal problem diagnosis of microservice applications are a big challenge for many enterprises. In order to solve this problem, UFIDA YonBIP has developed the Hubble system to monitor and analyze the key indicators of the entire life cycle of enterprise applications. The monitoring source penetrates multiple dimensions of users, businesses, applications, and systems, and penetrates hosts, containers, networks, and Multiple vertical core monitoring layers such as middleware and servers; in terms of data collection, comprehensive data collection is carried out around the three dimensions of links, logs, and indicators, and the collected data is cut using the core data assembly module, and real-time calculations are used respectively The two computing models of offline computing analyze and process data in multiple dimensions such as users, businesses, middleware, and infrastructure, and provide visual data models for display to enterprise application managers such as R&D, operation and maintenance, and operations.
Figure 4 Hubble technical architecture
Distributed transaction technology supporting microservices and intelligent monitoring technology for comprehensive monitoring of enterprise service operation are key technologies for cloud native architecture for enterprise applications. There are not many platforms in the market that can solve these two aspects well.
04
Six considerations for choosing a platform
Possessing a leading technical architecture and key platform technology innovation is an important criterion for judging whether a platform is a leading product in the digital age.
But this cannot be the standard for companies to choose a platform. The importance of business innovation platform (BIP) to enterprises is beyond doubt. The selection of BIP is directly related to the effect of business operations, the sustainability and health of the company's future development.
Shi Zhoujun introduced to Chinasoft.com that when choosing a platform product, the following factors must be considered:
a) Pingfang's products have always taken the lead in technology and architecture. For example, adopting new cloud native technologies, big data technologies, enterprise AI technologies, metadata-driven architectures, etc.
b) The ability to evolve and adapt to rapid technological changes and iterations. For example, what is popular today is a microservice architecture, but it may become serverless the day after. It is recommended to realize the separation of technology and application, the change of technology does not affect the application, the change of application does not affect the technology, the separation of technology application, the two can evolve independently.
c) It must have open capabilities and cannot find a platform product that cannot be replaced or that is expensive to replace;
d) The platform must have a certain user scale. Only when the number of users of the platform reaches a certain scale can it be mature and stable;
e) Have the ability to innovate quickly and publish quickly. For example, have low-code or no-code development platforms, rich connectivity capabilities, and mature and available general services in the field;
f) Platform manufacturers must have a good brand and strong strength. The platform is a product that requires long-term investment. Only companies with strength and strategy can have long-term investment in talent and capital.
Shi Zhoujun told reporters that UFIDA has unique advantages in the platform technology of enterprise digital intelligence. UFIDA has provided enterprises with various enterprise services and business innovations for a long time, and has accumulated a wealth of domain models, industry solutions, business application scenarios, and proven general platform capabilities, which are not available to other digital platform vendors for service companies. Just as Alibaba has unique competitive advantages as Alibaba Cloud and has achieved great success, the important reason is that it has the most complex e-commerce application scenarios, so UFIDA also has the complex and diverse enterprise application scenarios required by the business innovation platform. This will also promote YonBIP to take the lead in future platform competition.