From the end of March this year, the SmartX 2018 Channel Partner Conference was officially held in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. This also marks the first time that this 5-year-old hyper-converged growth company has focused its strategy on the development of the channel market.
It is worth mentioning that SmartX's three channel partner events attracted more than 1,200 people to sign up, and the scene was full of friends. To some extent, it also means that hyper-convergence, as a new-generation data center infrastructure platform, is releasing huge amounts of money in China. Value and super attractive.
However, unlike the popular "go ahead" in the entire Chinese hyper-converged market, SmartX co-founder and COO Wang Hongyi admitted: "Whether investors, customers or partners, they all know that we are a 'slow' company. company, but we feel that in the enterprise market, we must lay a good foundation for the company, and only in this way can we go further.”
Indeed, although fast and slow are two speeds and two rhythms, they do not conflict; perhaps slowing down is more fast in a certain sense, and laying the foundation one step at a time is still a must for all successful brands. road. Therefore, this is also behind the success of SmartX, bringing the greatest value and inspiration to the Chinese hyper-converged market.
The offensive and defensive path behind fast and slow
Objectively speaking, hyperconvergence is undoubtedly the fastest growing market in the data center field in the past few years. According to the latest statistics from IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2017, the global sales revenue of hyper-converged systems increased by 69.4% year-on-year to US$1.25 billion, accounting for 34.3% of the entire converged system market; for the whole year of 2017, the sales of hyper-converged systems exceeded 37%. billion, an increase of 64.3% compared to 2016.
Not only that, but globally, IDC predicts that the hyper-converged market will have an average compound annual growth rate of 28.9% from 2016 to 2021, and the overall market revenue will reach tens of billions of dollars; Maintaining an average annual compound growth rate of 24.7%, the market size will reach US$600 million in 2021.
Hongyi Wang, Co-founder and COO of SmartX
Driven by market demand, various "schools" have also emerged in China's hyper-converged rivers and lakes, such as the Technology Alliance School, the Open Source School, and the Internet School. However, unlike other companies, SmartX has firmly stood on the side of "independent innovation" since its inception, and has embarked on a path of differentiation in the history of hyper-convergence.
In Wang Hongyi's opinion: "If there are two choices, choose the more difficult one." He believes that independent innovation is the only prerequisite to ensure SmartX achieves "five-star service quality". More importantly, the continuous independent research and development road can also allow the company to continuously accumulate technology, accumulate talents, and shape the brand, while ensuring continuous innovation.
Perhaps it is this choice that makes SmartX a "slow" company, but this "slow" choice has allowed SmartX to gain more. Its hyper-converged solution SmartX Halo 3.0 is highly reliable and high-performance. , elastic expansion and ease of use have been recognized by many customers.
According to reports, in the first two years of SmartX's establishment, there were only a dozen people in the company, and there was no rush to expand the scale. Everyone focused on writing code. Although the 0.1 version of the product launched in 2014 can be delivered to the outside world, SmartX has been "holding back". , allowing itself to settle down and polish the product more meticulously.
This "slow work and careful work" attitude can also be reflected in several details. For example, Wang Hongyi recalled: "At the beginning of the product development stage, we all said that our R&D person in charge had a 'software cleanliness', and the code must be simplified and simplified again."
For another example, in terms of engineering automation process, SmartX also strictly requires itself, from writing code to coder review; then to continuous integration, automated testing; and finally to packaging and delivery, it has formed a complete set of mechanisms and processes, which not only ensures that Product quality ensures delivery efficiency.
It is this "slowness" that has created SmartX's management style of stable operation, and has allowed SmartX to have the largest hyper-converged deployment of more than 3,000+ nodes in China since its establishment 5 years ago. Unicom "Woyun", Taikang Life Insurance, Guotai Junan, China Merchants Securities, BOE, Haier, Shandong Rural Credit, Besunyen, Cedar Holdings and many other leading customers and a large number of practical cases.
Therefore, Wang Hongyi said: "Independent research and development and innovation is a gradual and continuous process, so we must maintain a basic awe of the laws of technology."
Considerations for entering the channel market
Of course, this "slow" choice also affects SmartX's channel expansion.
This year, SmartX officially released the "SMARTX²" channel strategy. SmartX will recognize and encourage partners of different types and levels of investment, that is, channel partners can get "Certification", "Gold" and "Platinum" (Platinum) three kinds of authorization, and SmartX will match them with different business resources, service support and benefits.
At the same time, SmartX will also join hands with Vishijiajie and Huirui Yicheng as two general agents to carry out market layout in 4 major central cities and 5 major cities, and will vigorously enter overseas markets in the second half of the year to seize the opportunity .
Duo Yuanyun, Vice President of Sales at SmartX
In this regard, Duo Yuanyun, Vice President of Sales of SmartX, said: "Channel is one of the four major focuses of the company's sales strategy this year, but we have also made careful consideration on the timing of channel entry, channel structure model, and regional coverage selection. ."
First, it takes at least 6-9 months for a new product to enter the market to have a certain scale of sales. Before that, hyper-converged solutions required a lot of time to educate the market, but now almost all ICT companies are deploying hyper-convergence, and customers are increasingly accepting hyper-converged products, which lays a solid foundation for SmartX to open up the channel market Base.
Second, after five years of exploration and practice in the hyper-converged market, SmartX has achieved a breakthrough from the top customer group. He said: "When the product is fully mature, we take the lead in winning the top customers, and then it is easier for our partners to make this product and sell our products with more confidence, because we have verified the reliability and stability of the products. In addition, partners are more confident when facing customers.”
Third, SmartX has also found like-minded general-generation partners in channel development. For example, Pfizer Yicheng became the general distributor of all products in China at the beginning of the SmartX channel system. The most important reason is that they are fully committed to SmartX. The general manager of Pfizer Yicheng also said: "We missed VMware, we missed Huawei, but we will not miss SmartX again." Similarly, VST Jiajie also attaches great importance to the hyper-converged market, and has formed a full-time team to be responsible for the sales and technical services of SmartX products.
Fourth, SmartX has been relatively stable along the way, so whether it is channel structure or layout rhythm, it also focuses on the future. Among them, the selection of the general generation model, SmartX is based on the overall sales increase after five years to support the channel structure; and the choice of cities, SmartX will not cover so fast all at once, and will adhere to a steady and steady pace of advancement. This year, SmartX hopes to develop 200 certified partners and 50 gold partners with the support of the two general managers.
Duo Yuanyun emphasized that the meaning behind "SMARTX²" is actually the hope that the channel system built by SmartX is not a simple "plus" relationship, but the continuous fission and win-win support of the "flat mode" value. Therefore, in the future, SmartX will adhere to the concept of "pragmatic, stable, equal and long-term", and together with partners who are willing to continue to invest for a long time, become the best hyper-converged technical experts, sales experts, and service experts; and finally achieve a win-win situation, Let’s welcome the arrival of the hyper-converged market together.
Three judgments for the future of hyper-convergence
In the past few years, many domestic companies have believed in the "fast fish rule", that is, the big fish eats the small fish, and the fast fish eats the slow fish. But in fact, this kind of rule is actually easy to be influenced by the "wind". When there is wind, it dances in the wind, and when there is no wind, it dies. However, without solid R&D investment and product innovation, where can the market continue to recognize it?
Therefore, Wang Hongyi firmly believes that the hyper-convergence market is not a so-called "outlet", but a general trend that can change the development of the data center field. Like-minded people change the current industrial pattern and major events in the existing world, specifically:
First, software-defined data centers are being reconstructed. Today, hyper-converged products are not only eating away at storage, but also in the server market, and even in the virtualization and cloud management platform markets. It can be said that in the future, hyper-convergence will become an important "explosion point" in changing the data center infrastructure landscape.
But in this process, only companies with strong product and technical capabilities will win. To this end, SmartX will continue to improve product functions. For those customers who need distributed deployment, SmartX also provides distributed block storage functions; and for customers who need traditional enterprise-level storage companies, SmartX is also strengthening the capabilities of active-active, asynchronous disaster recovery, continuous data protection, and all-flash.
Second, the hyperconverged pure software delivery model is becoming mainstream. According to IDC's data in the fourth quarter of 2017, VMware's hyperconverged software revenue was $405 million, followed by Nutanix's revenue of $368 million, Dell's revenue of $96 million, and HPE's revenue of $62 million, showing a huge market potential.
Wang Hongyi said that hyper-converged software delivery is more flexible and efficient than integrated opportunities. As more and more hardware is compatible with hyper-converged software, the market's awareness of hyper-convergence is getting higher and higher, and users' willingness to choose software delivery increases. It will get stronger and stronger, and there is reason to believe that there will be more pure software delivery cases in 2018.
Finally, in terms of the form of data existence, data can be divided into three categories, namely online data, nearline data and offline data. SmartX now solves more online data, and will consider the application scenarios of nearline and offline data in the future. , so there is still a lot of room for hyper-converged market development. No matter what kind of scenario, companies with the ability to independently develop distributed storage products will definitely take the lead in the market.
From this perspective, the industry is talking about hyper-convergence entering the market reshuffle period, but it has not yet reached that point in time. However, with the in-depth promotion of hyper-converged products, when customers need a large amount of capacity expansion, it is really a critical point to consider the competitiveness of hyper-converged companies.
Therefore, Wang Hongyi finally said: "This is also an important reason why we always strictly demand ourselves, adhere to the principle of slow work and careful work, and insist on helping customers provide truly valuable solutions."
Summary of the full text, not compromising on product homogeneity, not stingy with investment in technological innovation, and constantly releasing resources to empower partners. This is undoubtedly the key reason for SmartX to continue to lead in China's hyper-converged market. The offensive and defensive way behind slow development. There is reason to believe that the past success is just a new starting point for SmartX, and more room for growth is waiting for SmartX to redefine.
Shen Yao's Science and Technology Observation was founded by Shen Yao (WeChat: shenyao) , a cross-border technology media person . He has 15 years of media work experience and has experience in self-driving on 100,000 kilometers of highways in China and the United States. Column, dedicated to the observation and thinking of the technology industry, here to understand the technology industry, know the trend, and win the future!