Technology cloud report original.
2022 is a "watershed" year for cloud computing.
Compared with the hotness of the previous two years, the cloud computing industry in 2022 will not be easy: Alibaba Cloud’s revenue growth rate in the first quarter hit a record low, and Tencent Cloud’s market share was overtaken by the latecomer Huawei Cloud, falling to the third place .
Under such circumstances, at the beginning of 2023, major cloud vendors have "shifted gears" one after another, resetting the tone, adjusting the organizational structure, and changing the market strategy.
Zhang Yong, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, personally took charge of the president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, and set the keyword for 2023 as "advance"; Ma Huateng, founder and CEO of Tencent, set the tone for the strategic development direction of Tencent Cloud again; Cloud started operating as a separate business unit...
A series of moves revealed to us an important signal: the wind direction of cloud computing is about to change.
Organizational Changes, Cloud Computing Battlefield Resurrected
According to Canalys cloud service statistics, China's cloud infrastructure service spending increased by 11% year-on-year, reaching US$7.3 billion in Q2 in 2022, accounting for 12% of the global overall cloud spending.
Compared with the high growth momentum of 33% in the global cloud service market, the growth of the Chinese market has slowed down significantly, falling below 20% for the first time.
The growth of the cloud computing industry has pressed the "brake button". One of the reasons is that the demand for the cloud in the Internet industry has begun to slow down.
The deployment of cloud resources by Internet customers has basically been completed, and the Internet industry traffic has peaked, and there is no market demand to support continuous investment.
In fact, in the past year, the cloud business of major Internet companies has been in a state of adjustment.
Alibaba Cloud's latest strategy has shifted from "fixed" to "progressive". Zhang Yong, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Alibaba Group, sits in person and employs a younger and more dynamic executive team. This is enough to show that the entire Alibaba Group attaches great importance to the cloud business, and it also means that in the future, the emphasis on Alibaba Cloud business strategy will increase. Further increase.
In terms of technology, Alibaba Cloud has broken through the technical base, and has formed a complete technology stack from self-developed chips to innovative computing architecture. "Cloud nail integration" is the "experimental field" for the collaborative application of various technologies of Alibaba Cloud. In the future, it is expected to become the core growth curve.
Source: Dingding Strategy Conference
In terms of personnel, Ali recruited Cai Yinghua, who was the president of Huawei China's government and enterprise business, to serve as the senior vice president of the group and the president of Alibaba Cloud's global sales to manage the sales business.
Immediately after taking office, he started to adjust the organizational structure and strategy. On the one hand, it is necessary to optimize the sales organization and form a model of "industry-based construction and regional main battle". On the other hand, it is necessary to make profit to ecological partners.
Not only Alibaba Cloud, but Tencent Cloud has also started a "big turn", shifting the focus from scale to value.
Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent and CEO of the cloud and smart industry business group, said that in the future, Tencent will focus on "key product tracks" and "building technical barriers". deliver.
Tencent will set up a new government and enterprise business line in 2022, with Li Qiang, who was the global senior vice president of SAP, as the president.
Previously, the various ministries of the smart industry that existed in parallel and independently under the CSIG framework mainly covered government affairs, industry, agriculture, energy, cultural tourism, real estate, sports and other fields, which provided an opportunity for Tencent Cloud to tap large customers.
The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology has predicted that in the domestic cloud computing market in 2021, the government cloud alone will account for more than 40%.
It can be seen that large government and enterprise customers with sufficient budget, high customer unit price and large market potential will inevitably be the battleground for cloud computing manufacturers.
JD.com also takes cloud computing as a key development direction for the new year at the beginning of 2023, with "JD Cloud" as the main prominent brand of the group.
The newly established JD Cloud Business Department will integrate the original JD Cloud business group, focus on the integration of IaaS, PaaS products, sales, and standard delivery, and establish a Xinchuang Cloud product matrix.
Cao Peng, Chairman of the Group Technical Committee and Head of the Cloud Product R&D Department of JD Cloud Business Group of JD Technology, will serve as the head of the JD Cloud Business Department.
Source: JD Cloud Exhibition
After the organizational structure adjustment of JD Technology, the strategic position of JD Cloud has accelerated, which not only represents the deep integration of JD Technology Group's development direction with cloud computing, but also means that JD Cloud will become the "fourth major enterprise" besides retail, logistics and big health. Drive the carriage", speeding forward.
It can be seen that all cloud vendors are emphasizing returning to the essence of technology and services, and squeezing out exaggerated and bubble things.
To bring business value to customers, cloud enterprises also need to get reciprocal profit returns. Only by realizing the two-way transformation of cloud computing value can the whole industry develop healthily and sustainably.
Internet giants move downwards and operators make efforts upwards
Behind the transfer, it can be seen that the major Internet companies dare not take it lightly in the face of changes in the internal and external environments of the cloud computing market.
On the one hand, in 2022, the Internet industry and traditional industries are reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Correspondingly, in the cloud computing market, the demand for the former will decline, and the latter will be insufficient, resulting in a slowdown in the growth rate of the domestic cloud computing market.
The growth rate of the domestic public cloud market can reach about 30% in the past few years, but it can be described as a cliff-like decline in 2022, with a growth rate of only about 10%.
The "China Public Cloud Service Market Tracking" report released by IDC also shows that China's public cloud IaaS+PaaS market in the first half of 2022 will decline by 18% compared with the growth rate of 48.7% in the first half of 2021.
The Canalys report shows that in Q3 2022, China's cloud service spending will reach US$7.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8%, and the annual growth rate has fallen below 10% for the first time, which has slowed down for three consecutive quarters.
On the other hand, the domestic cloud computing market is highly competitive, with four major schools competing for the market.
In addition to the Internet giants represented by Alibaba and Tencent, there are also operators represented by Tianyi Cloud, Mobile Cloud and China Unicom Cloud, ICT manufacturers represented by Huawei Cloud and Inspur Cloud, and Jinshan Cloud, Qingyun The genre of independent cloud vendors represented by Technology and UKD.
Facing the slowdown in the growth of the market, Internet manufacturers are also less tolerant of cloud business losses. They actively carry out strategic contraction, and the growth rate of each business has declined significantly.
According to Alibaba's financial report, Alibaba Cloud's revenue growth rates in the first three quarters of 2022 will be 12%, 10%, and 4% respectively, while the revenue growth rates in the four quarters of 2021 will be 37%, 29%, and 33%, respectively. % and 20%.
In the first three quarters of 2022, the overall revenue growth rate of financial technology and enterprise service businesses, including Tencent Cloud business, is 4.6%, which is far lower than the 15%-20% growth rate expected by the market in the first quarter.
The growth rate of Baidu's smart cloud business in the past three quarters was 45%, 31%, and 24%, respectively, and the growth rate has also declined.
The performance of independent cloud vendors is also not satisfactory. According to Qingyun Technology’s financial report, in the first three quarters of 2022, its revenue was 233 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 21.01%; Uked’s financial report shows that in the first three quarters of 2022, its revenue was 1.489 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 36.43%.
Kingsoft Cloud's revenue in the first three quarters of 2022 will be 6.049 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.5%.
In order to increase profit margins, Kingsoft Cloud is also taking the initiative to shrink, greatly reducing the CDN business that accounts for a large proportion of revenue but has a low gross profit margin.
At the same time, the carrier cloud has bucked the trend and maintained a high growth rate.
The "state-owned cloud" represented by the three major operators of China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom has performed strongly, taking advantage of the wind of the government affairs market to rise rapidly, and is reconstructing the order of the cloud computing market.
As of Q3 of 2022, although Ali, Huawei, Tencent, and Baidu have maintained the pattern of four clouds, Tianyi Cloud has become a dark horse, surpassing Kingsoft Cloud and ranking among the top six.
According to the financial report for the first half of 2022, China Telecom's e-surfing cloud revenue was 28.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 101%; mobile cloud revenue was 23.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 104%; Unicom cloud revenue was 18.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 143%.
Throughout the first half of the year, the three major operators have doubled their growth.
The change in the pattern is also because the development of the Internet industry once drove the rapid growth of the cloud computing industry and brought about the rapid development of the public cloud. By 2022, as the growth of Internet industry customers slows down, cloud vendors are also moving to the traditional For industry expansion, major government and enterprise customers are the focus of grabbing.
Large government and enterprise customers have become the competition point. On the one hand, under the influence of the epidemic and major national policies, the demand for large government and enterprise customers has reached the stage of explosion, which is a new growth point for the cloud computing market.
With the promotion of the development of the digital economy at the national level, it has become a major trend for major government and enterprise customers to use the cloud.
On the other hand, winning large government and enterprise customers means that the business amount is high, the renewal rate is high, the customer's ability to pay is strong, and the willingness to repurchase is high.
Often a successful breakthrough can be exchanged for long-term cooperation, and the cost invested can eventually be exchanged for income.
Among the players in the cloud computing market, in addition to major Internet companies, there are also Huawei Cloud, Tianyi Cloud, China Unicom Cloud, and Mobile Cloud, which have long been deeply involved in the government affairs market. keeps climbing.
The reason why the carrier cloud can be rolled out so quickly is inseparable from its years of accumulation in the government affairs market.
These operators' clouds and Huawei have been deeply involved in the to B and to G fields for a long time.
However, major Internet companies that started from to C still need to continue to make up lessons. When doing to B and to G business, the channel network, post-service and delivery are all shortcomings, and this cannot be changed overnight.
At present, cloud services have developed from the initial concept to the stage of popularization and wide application. Although the overall growth rate of the domestic cloud computing market will slow down in 2022, it is still full of hope.
IDC predicts that in the next five years, the compound growth rate of China's overall cloud computing market will be around 20%.
And such a growth rate is an opportunity that all cloud service providers must not miss.
With the opening of the "big adjustment" of cloud computing players, in 2023, the results of these adjustments will be released one after another. By then, the entire cloud market may be even more lively.
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