"There are many Chinese overseas companies that have seized an opportunity to achieve rapid growth. These companies are characterized by being good at leveraging the power of cloud computing."
A few days ago, in the "2023 Amazon Cloud Technology Overseas Day", Liang Yan, general manager of the Digital Native Division of Amazon Cloud Technology China, talked about the current status of Chinese companies going overseas. He pointed out that these fast-growing overseas companies combine technology and business. , After discovering an opportunity, large-scale deployment can be carried out immediately, and the advancement from perception to implementation can be accelerated, which is completely different from the early traditional seagoing. "We recommend that seagoing enterprises use the cloud, and use the cloud well, and use the cloud more."
According to the latest report released by IDC in May, more than 80% of Chinese overseas companies rely on Amazon cloud technology for overseas business expansion. Liang Yan said: " The biggest feature of Amazon's cloud technology is "how fast and cheap", plus security compliance, and ecological support. In fact, ecology is very important. It complements the difficulties we have built on the cloud platform. industry solutions, because industry solutions must rely on ecosystems to achieve. In addition, Amazon has a huge ecosystem overseas, which is also very helpful for customers to go overseas .”
Regarding the current Chinese enterprises going overseas, Amazon Cloud Technology believes that enterprises need to "think global and localize operations" in the process of going overseas to achieve high-quality going overseas. In an environment full of uncertainties, overseas companies need to achieve "more", "fast", "good" and "saving". "Many" means to continuously and efficiently allocate resources on a global scale and expand business to more countries and regions; "fast" means to use the latest technology to achieve rapid innovation and delivery according to the local market and customer needs; "good" ", is to ensure the stability, resilience, safety and compliance of global business; "saving" means to reduce costs and increase efficiency, improve business efficiency, and better cope with the current cost pressure. The cloud can play an important role in all of these areas. Through the cloud, you can inherit the compliance of the cloud service itself, without having to start compliance from scratch; through the cloud, you can implement global deployment in minutes, and operate flexibly according to business needs at any time; through the cloud, you can quickly embrace new technologies and accelerate application innovation . In addition to the "many, fast, good, and economical" infrastructure and cloud service support, Amazon Cloud Technology also provides a wealth of security compliance services, partner solutions, and Amazon's global business system to help Chinese companies quickly grasp overseas business opportunities. achieve rapid growth.
"Chinese companies are entering the deep-water zone when going overseas, and the competition will become increasingly fierce. How to realize "localized operations" and upgrade from "manufactured" to "smart" will become the key to victory." Amazon Cloud Technology Commercial Market in China Li Xiaomang, general manager of the public affairs department, said.
The following is an interview with Liang Yan, General Manager of the Digital Native Division of Amazon Cloud Technology China, by OSCHINA and other platforms:
Media: As an observer of the industry, in the first half of this year, when our foreign trade enterprises went overseas, what aspects and levels are the needs of enterprises reflected? Compared with last year's situation, what new concept does the overall trend present?
Liang Yan: From an overall macro perspective, we can see that both the Chinese economy and the global economy are facing certain pressures and challenges, especially in terms of import and export, which has indeed brought great pressure to our physical enterprises.
According to my own observations, the main trend of Chinese companies going overseas is first of all the dual-cycle model, which is also a development model encouraged by the state. I guess it will be this way for a long time. Many Internet companies have placed their business overseas from the very beginning. Their customer base is overseas, and their sales mainly come from abroad.
The biggest feature of this trend is that the era of barbaric growth has passed, and the growth methods of placing huge amounts of advertisements, increasing sales, and relying on money to generate sales and maintain customers are no longer effective. This is affected by many factors.
The second trend is that we need to reduce costs, not only the technical costs on the cloud but also the operation and maintenance costs of the business. When Chinese e-commerce companies go overseas, especially those companies that manufacture domestically, they face many cost problems. For example, delivery, whether it is direct delivery in China or building a front warehouse overseas will bring costs. Similarly, if the goods are returned, whether the goods will come back or not, and the cost of recycling are all factors that need to be considered. Products on e-commerce platforms, such as women's clothing, usually need to find models to display, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive. Now, through the new generative AI technology, especially Wen Shengtu, it is possible to put new products on the shelves in batches, change the clothes of models in batches, and even change the background.
Media: As far as the industry is concerned, according to your observations, what is the industry trend of Chinese companies going overseas in recent years?
Liang Yan: I am in charge of the Internet. We generally subdivide it into several vertical fields, including games, e-commerce, social networking, advertising, and other things like SaaS, which are five major categories.
According to my observations, the game industry has been thriving over the years, and leading companies such as NetEase, Tencent, and Mihayou are very strong globally.
In the past two years, we have seen companies in the Chinese manufacturing industry also begin to go overseas. The most typical example is new energy vehicles. At the earliest time, everyone said that a new energy vehicle was described as "a mobile phone with four wheels", which means that a large amount of data processing is involved.
In addition, there are many enterprises in China that provide SaaS services. I believe that in the future, as more and more Chinese companies go overseas, these Chinese ISVs will use SaaS to deploy globally. In the past two years, this field has grown very fast.
Media: Which markets are SaaS companies mainly targeting? Which underlying technical services are more needed?
Liang Yan:
SaaS actually builds a multi-user and multi-tenant scenario on a cloud, so the underlying requirements are security and compliance first. I can’t say that I can see the data in other companies. This is absolutely impossible. This is multi-tenancy isolation problem.
In addition, on the cloud, there is also some responsibility-sharing model between the SaaS company and the customer, which is responsible for the environment inside the tenant, and so on. This requires many, but also many challenges.
From the perspective of SaaS application types, there are several types that are more common. The first is empowerment. For example, Shopkeeper empowers e-commerce to build a website. It only needs to put forward the basic requirements, and it will build it according to the template with one click. There are also some infrastructure types, such as PingCAP's product TiDB, and there are many such examples in Chinese companies. There are also many tools, such as the video editing tools that Daewoo Infinity promotes overseas. In addition, there are some social applications, including customer management, data analysis and other enabling aspects. There are also collaborations, for example, Feishu is also starting to do this.
There is still a challenge for Chinese enterprises to apply SaaS in overseas markets, because it is a business-oriented application, and it must be more closely integrated with the local ecology and promoted more effectively. How can we help these SaaS companies?
They can be listed on our Marketplace. After being listed on the Marketplace, when a customer in other regions needs it, he can directly purchase and use it on the Marketplace. This is the first point.
The second point is that if ISV manufacturers sign some agreements with us, they can get some incentives for sales in other regions, which will motivate them to promote this ISV product. Therefore, in our partner program, we have a special plan for ISVs, which is dedicated to empowering their development in overseas markets, expanding their business in specific regions, including listing on the Marketplace, and obtaining rewards such as commissions in sales. For example, in the United States, if they can sell products or have commission incentives, it is also very attractive to him.
In general, for Chinese ISV software companies to go overseas, I think they still need to carry out long-term work in ecological construction, which is a goal that is difficult to achieve in the short term.
Media: Amazon cloud technology has six advantages in helping enterprises go overseas, one of which is a wide range of cloud services, providing more than 200 services. What common needs do enterprises have for these cloud services?
Liang Yan:
For enterprises, the most common and the most demanded are network, storage, and computing. Once the data enters the cloud, various analysis and marketing tasks are required, such as precise marketing, user portraits, etc., which are actually the work of data analysis.
Next, there will be some advanced services, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will assist enterprises in processing data in a more refined manner.
Of course, there are some other services. For example, when traditional companies go overseas, home appliance companies usually have to set up a call center to solve the problems of local customers. This call center cannot transfer calls back to the country because there are local language support and so on.
There are other hardware-related services, such as Amazon Outposts. Amazon Outposts looks like a cabinet filled with servers and storage devices, but you can move it to your own computer room and connect it through a network cable to make it a It can be extended to the cloud service in your computer room. In the past one or two years, Amazon Outposts has been in great demand overseas, especially in specific industries such as new energy vehicles and finance. In these industries, some data must be stored locally and cannot be placed on the cloud, but it is a good solution to deploy and manage the same cloud to meet these requirements.
Media: In the ever-changing compliance environment, how should Chinese companies go overseas? How does Amazon cloud technology respond to this?
Liang Yan:
Before the product is put on the shelves, a complete security compliance assessment and audit is required. This is not only a technical issue, but also a business issue.
Our technical support is how we can provide you with a very complete and safe platform to meet the safety and compliance requirements of the target market after your business is sorted out. Our advantage is that most of the hosting services meet the security compliance requirements of various countries, so the audit work will be very trouble-free during your operation in the future. Some audits involving platform security and compliance are very simple and worry-free. However, other risks still need to be considered at the business level, which requires the company's management and business management team to conduct management and regulatory considerations at the business and regional levels.