Last week, the "Deep Stream Alliance" organized its first exchange, with Mr. Yang Jingyu, head of edge computing technology at "Alibaba Cloud", explaining the development of edge computing. Through exchanges, I further thought about the current domestic discussions of "consumer Internet" and "industrial Internet". Since the publication of the article "It's Time to Thoroughly Rethink China's Internet Economy" in May last year, domestic regulatory authorities, public opinion and the Internet industry have all launched multi-perspective reflections on the development model and direction of Internet platform companies. In the second half of last year, the voice of "Industrial Internet" gradually emerged, and the traditional Internet platform model was summarized as "Consumer Internet". Discussions about the shift from 2C to 2B began to deepen. Domestic Internet platform giants all made high-profile declarations to enter the field of "Industrial Internet". I would like to take this opportunity to publicly share my understanding of the "Industrial Internet" for the first time as follows. In future discussions on global industrial changes, we will cover the following perspectives in more depth.
1. The urbanization brought about by the two industrial revolutions is mainly characterized by "pipeline network" (water, electricity, gas, highways, railways, air routes). Pipeline network has completely changed human life. The information technology revolution continues to deepen the production and lifestyle of pipe networks (the popularization and development of communication networks). If we look at the industrial cycle that is hotly discussed in the financial field today from the historical perspective of pipeline network, we will draw more meaningful conclusions. Since the era of telegraph and telephone, the continuous improvement of information network transmission speed and computing speed has transformed human society from the traditional industrial era to the information age, and this process is still continuing. The development of new technologies, including edge computing, is a concrete manifestation of this evolutionary process.
2. The premise that any technology can be applied on a large scale needs to be based on cost-benefit considerations. Only when specific information technology can effectively reduce the cost of information technology users and bring sufficient benefits to them, will this technology have a realistic possibility of becoming popular. The consideration that the application party can pay for this technology (the purchasing power of the application party), in turn, determines the level of commercial benefits of the technology. The current different understandings of edge computing implementation methods are driven by the different interests and demands of various participants, including basic operators, network equipment vendors, and software service providers (including Internet platform companies). Whether it is competition or cooperation will be decided by the final buyer. to decide. This process may still be long.
3. In 2018, after a deep reflection on the development model of Internet platform companies in China, from the perspective of Internet companies, the opposing "Internet-style" groups of "consumer Internet" and "industrial Internet" emerged. " concept, as well as "Internet-style" discussions such as "from 2C to 2B". It can be seen from the use of the above concepts that domestic Internet platform companies have been facing bottlenecks and upper limits in their business models for individual consumers, and they hope to further expand into the production field and find new growth points. At the same time, they also hope to regain the centralized status they once achieved in the 2C era in the process.
4. The dichotomy between "consumer Internet" and "industrial Internet" is the perspective of domestic Internet platform companies. I personally do not agree with this division. The impact of information technology on productive industries is far earlier than the direct impact on individual consumers. Services for the so-called "industry" have long existed. Industry giants such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP have a long history of enterprise-level information technology services. For decades, companies like Walmart, which today seem to be traditional, have been able to stay at the top of the Fortune 500 for a long time precisely because it paid great attention to the informatization level of corporate operations in its very early days. The reason why global information technology service giants have been able to continue to grow rapidly in the past few decades is because their customers include large, medium and small enterprises in various industries. Among them, the giants in various industries have a large revenue base, and as long as they can save money through information technology The economic value reflected by a smaller proportion of operating costs will be very obvious, and these companies have the ability to pay high information technology service fees, which also motivates information technology service companies to have commercial incentives to carry out in-depth development cooperation. In other words, the individual purchasing power of enterprise-level information technology users (large or very large enterprises) is very strong, unlike individual consumers whose single purchasing power is weak and mainly reflected in the network aggregation effect.
5. Enterprise-level information technology services are closely related to industries, requiring service providers to be familiar with various industries (from industry and mining, electric power, water conservancy, aviation, ships, automobiles to finance, medical care, education, environmental protection, etc.) We have a deep understanding and can provide cross-border customized services for large or very large enterprises. The above-mentioned enterprises have high security and stability requirements for services, which far exceed the information service needs of individual consumers. In other words, the demand for enterprise-level information technology services has the characteristics of transnationality (large enterprises are often multinational enterprises), customization, high security and stability. However, the current accumulation of Chinese Internet platform enterprises in these aspects can only It’s a start. The above-mentioned industrial environment will determine the speed, scope and method of Chinese Internet platform companies' intervention in the enterprise-level information technology service market.
6. The development of China’s enterprise-level information technology services is subject to at least two factors:
First, whether China’s productive enterprises with manufacturing as the core can provide more and Quickly establish a foothold in high value-added fields and gain more international market share. Only in this way will the level of information technology service expenditures of these enterprises be significantly increased. That is to say, only if traditional industries can make more money and obtain more profits, can they spend more money on purchases. Information technology services to further improve efficiency. Whether the above can be realized depends on the depth of Chinese policymakers and various enterprises' understanding of globalization, the pertinence of future long-term system construction, and whether various enterprises have the ability and willingness to step out of the "local area network" and deeply participate in globalization. direct competition. In turn, it also depends on the degree of openness of the country: whether to continue to allow emerging enterprises to become enterprises within the local area network, so that they lack competition and enjoy de facto monopolies, and are strong internally but unable to go abroad for a long time, or whether to allow them to be in a real position as soon as possible. Promote its growth in a global competitive environment. These are two completely different choices that will determine the trajectory of China's future development of emerging industries.
Secondly, for domestic mid- to low-end manufacturing companies that are highly dependent on the development of Internet platforms, are Internet platform companies willing to first reduce the proportion of platform fees for these companies (these fees are currently equivalent to the land rent of traditional businesses) There is no essential difference), pay more attention to protecting the intellectual property rights of high-quality enterprises, and then turn to provide more information technology services to these enterprises and support the improvement of the efficiency of these enterprises, this truly technology-driven path, so as to achieve universal significance The ultimate win in the Internet will depend on the decision of Chinese Internet platform companies on the future development model. This is a process of interest game. On the other hand, since domestic platform companies are actually within the local area network, they were previously mainly able to help domestic small and medium-sized production companies sell domestically, or help foreign companies sell their products domestically, but it was difficult to help domestic companies achieve global market expansion, that is, it was difficult to Help domestic small and medium-sized enterprises to obtain more profits by selling products to countries with higher consumption power. With the opening up of global basic networks and logistics, and further changes in global consumer psychology, truly global platforms (such as Amazon) may use their global advantages to help Chinese manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises expand their overseas markets and establish a Global brand. We are witnessing these changes.
"Industrial Internet" and "Consumer Internet" are only concepts put forward from the perspective of Internet platform companies. To truly and deeply understand the industrial changes and development brought about by globalization, we need to get rid of these tendencies and limitations. concept constraints and pay more attention to each specific industry. Policy-driven arbitrage brought about by similar new concepts should be avoided, especially for the Science and Technology Innovation Board, which has high hopes.