Last week, QingCloud announced the completion of its Series D financing of RMB 1.08 billion, setting a new record for the highest single financial financing amount in China's cloud computing industry. Qingyun has grown from a geek technical team in the beginning to the main force of cloud computing in China today; as a start-up company, it is not easy for it to successfully break through the domestic market with its private cloud products. This financing also sends a clear signal to the domestic market - the private cloud is coming.
Qingyun Strategy Review: Transformation from Public Cloud to Private Cloud
First review the strategic choices of Qingyun along the way: Qingyun initially positioned itself as a basic public cloud service provider. The so-called basic public cloud service means that a third-party company builds a data center, and "rents" the servers, networks, and computing resources in it to customers through online connections. For example, "cloud hosting" is a typical basic public cloud service.
The large-scale up-front investment of basic public cloud services is often not affordable for startups. AWS (Amazon Web Service, Amazon Cloud) in the United States is a long-term investment by Amazon that costs more than 10 billion US dollars and takes ten years to generate profits. In the Chinese market, only giant-level companies can have such confidence.
Therefore, Qingyun quickly made adjustments and repositioned its own strategic breakthrough - private cloud enterprise-level solutions. Private cloud, enterprise market and financial sector are the three pillars of Qingyun's transformation strategy. Through the commercial use of public cloud, Qingyun has developed a complete cloud computing product line, and tailored public cloud products to form private cloud solutions.
Based on this concept, in July 2015, Qingyun launched a hyper-converged all-in-one machine, which pre-integrated Qingyun's core technology in a private cloud hardware, shortening the launch cycle of the enterprise cloud platform from months to days. This hyper-converged appliance subsequently became popular in the private cloud construction of financial institutions, quickly occupying the market.
▌I have also been in this industry for many years. I believe that Qingyun's rapid growth and impressive market performance have confirmed my three points of view:
First, "private cloud" meets the fundamental needs of the Chinese market.
There is a big cultural difference between China and the United States. Chinese people like to buy a house and save money, while Americans are used to renting and spending in advance. The cultural differences between China and the United States are also reflected in their respective enterprise cloud product selection preferences. American companies prefer to use public cloud services like AWS, while Chinese companies prefer to use "private" cloud products and services.
Chinese people will choose to buy a house if they have the conditions. Buying a private cloud is like buying property. It is protected by property law and will not be affected by any third party. Therefore, domestic enterprises and institutions (such as financial institutions) that know enough about cloud products and have certain requirements for information security will definitely use private cloud products in the future.
Second, private clouds can also be lightweight and can be quickly standardized and replicated.
In the past, there was a serious prejudice against private cloud products in the market. They felt that they had many customizations, long cycles, and slow implementation. Public cloud was the future. In the United States, high-end customized private clouds belong to traditional IT "projects", which are generally arranged by giants such as Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Therefore, many people arbitrarily think that private cloud is a traditional IT project, and it has all the shortcomings of traditional IT projects.
However, Qingyun showed everyone the possibility of quickly replicating the scale of private cloud products, and its hyper-converged all-in-one machines have huge market potential. Due to the limitations of their own business models, traditional IT giants cannot cheapen and standardize their core technologies; but once domestic manufacturers do this, private cloud will surely become a business model that can be quickly replicated.
Private cloud deployment technology is mature and convenient
Third, the convenience of "public-private connection" provides a foundation for the widespread use of private clouds.
"Information exchange and connection with the outside world" has become a basic requirement for many enterprises when building a private cloud platform. The concept of "hybrid cloud" currently popular in the market is actually a functional component for this requirement. In response to this, private cloud can also be done very well now. By safely opening the data in the private cloud to the external network, it can achieve "public-private seamless connection", thus providing great convenience for enterprises' private cloud applications .
▌Being rooted in the cloud product and service market all the year round, based on my professional knowledge and insight into the Chinese market, I insist that private cloud can occupy at least half of the Chinese cloud market. This time, I want to give a thumbs up to Qingyun Financing, because it not only enhances my confidence, but also points out the direction for start-ups in the field of cloud computing in China.
I have always believed that building a good product is the only way out for To B startups. In addition, it is necessary to penetrate the essence of this market, clarify its own core competitiveness, and dare to insist on oneself and not follow others' opinions, in order to establish barriers in the development and remain invincible.