The departure of Cai Yinghua and others, as well as Wu Yongming's emphasis on "returning to the public cloud and reducing offline projects", all indicate that Alibaba Cloud is undergoing a major strategic adjustment.
Text: Zhao Yanqiu.
Edited by Niu Hui. On December 12, Cai Yinghua officially resigned from Alibaba Cloud. A few days ago, there were already rumors within Alibaba Cloud. This is less than two years after he joined Alibaba Cloud in the spring of 2022. According to Alibaba's rules, only after working for two years can you exercise your rights, and you can only exercise half of your rights, and you will exercise the remaining half of your rights in the next two years. That is to say,Cai Yinghua's first batch of ** has not yet exercised his rights
When Cai Yinghua landed on Alibaba Cloud last year, he attracted a lot of attention in the industry. After leaving Huawei, after a period of transition in Nippon Paint China, he joined Alibaba Cloud, a direct competitor, and Alibaba also gave the rank of senior vice president of the group (M7 P12), which is equivalent to the rank of Jiang Fan when he was the president of ** and Tmall, which is the first appointment in the history of Alibaba Cloud.
At the same time as the news of Cai Yinghua's departure, Ren Geng, who is also a manager from Huawei, was in charge of Alibaba Cloud's China business.
At that time, Cai Yinghua, Ren Geng and other Huawei people joined, showing Alibaba Cloud's ambition to fight hard in the government and enterprise market. But now that Cai Yinghua and others are leaving, Alibaba Cloud has continued to emphasize public cloud before and after the Apsara Conference, as well as what Wu Yongming, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud, emphasized"Return to the public cloud and scale back offline projects".The voices all indicate that Alibaba Cloud is undergoing a major strategic adjustment.
"The times make heroes".
The industry is not surprised by Tsai's departure. On September 11 this year, one day after Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud, that is, on September 12, the Tianyancha app showed that Alibaba Cloud Computing Company *** also underwent industrial and commercial changes, and Cai Yinghua stepped down as a legal person, chairman and general manager.
Although these industrial and commercial changes are not uncommon in the industry, many sensitive people are already watching their further developments, such as whether Cai Yinghua will appear at events such as the Apsara Conference. On November 23, Alibaba Cloud underwent a new round of organizational restructuring and established three business divisions: public cloud, hybrid cloud, and overseas businessLiu Weiguang, Li Jin, and Yuan Qian are in charge respectively, report to Wu Yongming. Some people in the industry began to **, Cai Yinghua should be out".
Cai Yinghua's departure is estimated to have a lot to do with Alibaba Cloud's loss of orders or unsatisfactory growth in the government and enterprise market. Many industry veterans believe that "the current challenges and situation of Alibaba Cloud in the government and enterprise market cannot be solved at once by internal reform and organizational structure adjustment." No matter who you go to, this role is difficult. ”
Over the past six or seven years, Alibaba Cloud's strategy has evolved. At the beginning of its establishment, the founder, Dr. Wang Jian, agreed with the views expressed by Amazon AWS, namely:Cloud computing will eventually evolve into a public cloud。However, after 2017, Alibaba Cloud had to strengthen its layout of private clouds after realizing the requirements of some large government and enterprise customers for private clouds and hybrid clouds. Since then, Alibaba Cloud has rapidly introduced executives from Huawei or traditional TMT large enterprises.
After 2020, the growth of Internet business in the cloud market has been slowing down, replaced by the growth of the traditional government and enterprise market. Under the pressure of growth, Alibaba Cloud's actions in government and enterprise affairs have been strengthened. In 2021, at the Beijing Summit, in addition to the opening speech of the then president of Alibaba Cloud, the second speaker of the speech was the head of Alibaba Cloud's Government and Enterprise Business Division. During this conference, Alibaba Cloud also confirmed the establishment of a number of industry lines and regional lines, "which is unprecedented in the history of Alibaba Cloud", to further attack the government and enterprise market, which shows Alibaba Cloud's determination in government and enterprise affairs at that time.
Subsequently, Alibaba Cloud has done a large number of integration projects, and the sales of a number of government and enterprise projects, including Huawei, have also become the backbone of Alibaba Cloud. Interestingly, after Ren Geng of Huawei Department became the president of Alibaba Cloud China, Alibaba Cloud China was also nicknamed "Alibaba Cloud Huawei China" by employees, with strong internal KPIs, quarterly assessments, and a high elimination rate of sales employeesAlibaba Cloud China architects are bound to sales, go to order together, the performance of the small team is unqualified, and the architects are also unqualified, which are considered to be the most stringent assessments in the industry.
These practices once caused a lot of doubts, especially since short-term KPI assessment is not the cycle that a project in the TOB industry should have. "These ways to activate the sales force are to solve problems in a short and quick way, and you can get one or two orders, but it won't be systematic. An Alibaba Cloud person told the front line of digital intelligence. The government and enterprise market is not so fast, and Alibaba Cloud's product and service capabilities have not opened a gap with competing products.
In the government and enterprise market, Tencent has a WeChat traffic entrance, and Huawei has a service system and hardware. A former Alibaba Cloud employee observed, "Alibaba Cloud promotes some brains, but these algorithms can only provide local or single-point optimization, which are more expensive to sell, test the ability to sell, and are non-standard products that need one-to-one customization." These made him believe that Alibaba Cloud still needs to find a grip on the government and enterprise market. Moreover, this year, the corporate budget is much lower, and some projects are tendered at low prices or even 0 yuan, which is not good for all market participants.
Alibaba Cloud is currently facing greater challenges in the government cloud market, and some of Alibaba Cloud's winning bids have been scrapped and re-tendered.
Government and business affairs are very difficult. An industry insider said that even a company like Huawei that has laid the foundation has experienced a long period of accumulation. Even in the eyes of some Huawei insiders, government and enterprise affairs have been done for so many years, and compared with their own operators and terminal businesses, they are still tepid.
In 2021, the performance of Alibaba Cloud's external services has exceeded 70 billion yuan, and in 2022, it will be 74.6 billion yuan.
Relying on one person to pull the overall situation is obviously a problem that can be foreseen when thinking at the top level. A former Alibaba Cloud source said that Tsai's departure was not unexpected. "I think this may also be the current situation to create heroes, not in the general trend, tactical growth really can't solve the big problem. After many Huawei people go out, they are all 'dead' like this. Another industry veteran lamented.
The cloud market is changing
Behind Cai Yinghua's departure, not only the changes of Alibaba Cloud, but also the entire Chinese cloud market is undergoing great changes.
Now operators can take a lot of orders. A veteran told the front line of digital intelligence that many billions and tens of billions of yuan of centralized procurement of computing power networks in the east and west are undertaken by operators. For some domestic innovation platforms, such as one cloud and multiple cores, operators have assumed the role of planning or general contracting. In addition, operators are also the first choice for local cloud data centers or artificial intelligence computing centers, and many of them have adopted the method of joint operation and transportation with operators to solve the problem of funds. In this regard, operators have a financial advantage over some enterprises.
Now many people from Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent have joined carrier cloud companies. The above-mentioned person said. In recent years, carrier cloud has also used some special talent policies to attract talents. Although the overall treatment may not be as good as the original cloud vendor, butOperators are not worried about business, and everyone has seen that it is "relatively stable" in the market
In addition to the "three clouds" of China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, the other three major clouds in the market – Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud – have very similar strategies and situations. Previously, some operators used HUAWEI CLOUD's technology in their cloud bases, although now the carrier cloud is strengthening its own research and deliberately cutting it from HUAWEI CLOUDHuawei's investment in the underlying root technologyEven if the operator wins the bid, Huawei's related business can get even half of the order. The industry has seen that Huawei's strategy is taking a different path.
Tencent Cloud is considered by the industry to be a very flexible cloud. A former Tencent Cloud person told Digital Intelligence Frontline that a few years ago, Tencent Cloud also went through a period of poaching a large number of people from foreign companies, Alibaba, and Huawei, giving high salaries, and in the end, the business was not very effective, and was criticized by internal employees.
I thinkTencent controlled the expectationsIt didn't rivet it up, because Tencent has a few cards, WeChat, games, and the cloud business has always been reflected in the financial report together with the financial payment-related business, and there is no division. The above-mentioned person said, "Tencent also sees that the enterprise-level business has no way to do it quickly." ”
At the end of 2021, Tencent Cloud underwent a major strategic adjustment. "You can understand it as a 'hard brake'. Some people in the industry once told the front line of digital intelligence that Tencent Cloud has put forward the strategy of "being integrated" and invested in self-developed products. One of the changes is to increase the proportion of Tencent's self-developed products in each project, which is required to account for 30% in 2022In 2023, it will be further increased to 50%.。The other is that the third-party products that were previously collected are no longer recorded, and only the difference is counted, that is, the third-party products were originally 10 yuan, and they were sold for 11 yuan, and only 1 yuan was counted. This has led to a significant reduction in most project figures.
This change in the model has brought a series of huge impacts on its product team, sales team, service team, and partner system. A cloud computing industry veteran told the Digital Intelligence Frontline, for example, whether it is for sales or architects, the requirements for people to engage in integration and sell products are somewhat different, and sometimes even two groups of people. The industry has seen that in the past period, Tencent Cloud has made a number of organizational and personnel adjustments.
Tencent Cloud's transformation has been going on for two years, and the revenue of self-developed single products has not yet been announced, but the industry expects that its database and TCE proprietary cloud revenue should be goodThe influence of Tencent Meeting is not small, and not long ago, an industry joke was that Byte held a meeting with Ali employees, and finally used Tencent Meeting.
Alibaba Cloud is the leader of the domestic cloud market, and although it is very likely to be surpassed by the operator cloud of computing and network integration in terms of revenue this year, it is still considered by the industry to be the leading in China in terms of pure fragmented revenue and advanced technology.
Alibaba Cloud is now proposing a public cloud-first, which is seen as a return after learning the hard way. Public cloud is considered by the industry to be a more efficient way, especially in the era of large models, where the computing power and efficiency of public cloud are better. However, the operation mode and high salary structure of Internet companies are not suitable for customized projects.
However, we have to admit that the current public cloud has huge challenges in the government and enterprise market. Many large central state-owned enterprises and ** departments have not yet recognized the placement of data on the public cloud. Alibaba Cloud is also likely to develop self-developed products like Tencent Cloud in the future and become a leading player in the market.
I think at this time, the main theme of Alibaba Cloud should be changed, not rapid expansion, and the cost is very tight, then it will collapse. "It should be systematically adjusted." ”
But another extremely real problem is that the six clouds in the domestic market, coupled with the clouds that are struggling to catch up in the era of large models, the market seems too rolled. If the public cloud loses its scale, it is likely to lose its cost performance and technological advancement, and in the face of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud expanding around the world, what kind of changes will Chinese cloud enterprises have next?