The original report of the technology cloud.
From 54 billion yuan to 128.6 billion yuan - this is a report given by the Big Data Technology Standards Promotion Committee of the China Communications Standards Association for China's database industry.
The report points out that in the next five years, China's database industry will leapfrog from a 10-billion-level market to a 100-billion-level market.
In the last two years, China's database industry seems to be ushering in a new boom, and this boom is accompanied by a variety of technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, big data and AI.
With the acceleration of enterprise digitalization, the demand for various data analysis is also being released to the forefront.
Under all these changes, will the database industry usher in new developments?
There is a new trend in database development
If the entire software industry system is compared to a towering tree, the database is the core basic part of it, supporting most of the software ecology, and then enabling the normal operation of the core business systems of all walks of life in the entire digital China.
The database is known as the "crown jewel of basic software" because of its high technical threshold, long R&D cycle and high engineering requirements.
For a long time in the past, the domestic market was almost monopolized by overseas database vendors. Data shows that Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle account for more than two-thirds of the global database market.
The database is listed as one of the 35 key technologies of the country.
In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the country's requirements for information security and independent controllability, the domestic database market is also gradually rising. In this field, domestic enterprises have continuously strengthened their independent research and development capabilities and launched a series of database products with independent intellectual property rights.
Whether it is a traditional database vendor, a cloud database vendor, or an emerging force, they are sparing no effort to build various types of databases, and various products have a wide range of applications in different fields.
Although China's database has entered a stage of rapid development, it is still facing a large number of problems in technical research, industrial ecological optimization, and application collaboration in order to meet the needs of larger-scale and more complex application scenarios, reach the technical level of easy use, and realize replicable and promotable domestic databases.
In other words, the situation of being big but not strong, and many but not excellent, has not fundamentally changed.
However, it is worth noting that a new wave of technology is driving rapid changes in China's database market. Among the top ten scientific and technological terms in 2023, the large model ranks first, and the data elements also rank among the top three.
The first is the big model that has been hot for a year.
Since the beginning of this year, technologies such as AI agent and AIGC have been keywords in the upper-level application track, while the change of the underlying technology has always been relatively slow. In the database industry, a predictable trend is AI+BI+DI.
In fact, this trend is not in the era of large models, it was an imagination in the database industry even earlier. However, due to the lack of maturity of the technology, this vision has not been realized.
Specifically, in the combination of AI, BI, and DI, this part of the AI capability is provided by the large model manufacturer. The capabilities provided by the database vendor are in the underlying data processing and analysis.
Among them, DI is equivalent to a platform that accepts data processing requests; BI presents the results of these data analysis in a visual way.
However, in the era of large models, AI can better understand user intentions, and based on the powerful data computing and processing capabilities of the underlying layer, it can achieve a smoother and low-cost data analysis experience, and present the processing and analysis results of the underlying database on BI.
In fact, the landing of this model is not only under the tuyere of the new era of AI large models, but also under the expectations of the market.
Driven by the AI+BI+DI model, the database industry will pay more attention to the public cloud model. On the one hand, there is the cost factor, and on the other hand, the flexibility of the data usage model.
In the global database market, the market share of cloud databases has also increased significantly in the past two years. Not only that, but in the past two years, the proportion of cloud databases has exceeded that of on-premise databases.
In the era of large models, the public cloud model will become a new trend in the database field.
Secondly, in the 2023 technology keywords, data elements will also play a more important role in the database industry.
In the three-year action plan of "data elements" issued by the National Data Bureau, it is clearly stated that data resources that meet the conditions for asset recognition will be included in the balance sheet intangible assets or inventories, and data assetization will be promoted.
The regulations issued by the relevant authorities will also be officially implemented on January 1, 2024.
With the entry of data assets into the table in 2024, it will catalyze the database industry to a new level of development.
In the future, enterprises will pay more and more attention to the construction of data and asset level. The extensive data usage model of the past will also be upgraded to a refined model under stronger external regulatory requirements. Correspondingly, data construction and governance will become more reasonable within the enterprise.
More specifically, data assets act as a "base" within the enterprise.
One of the most common problems in the construction of the entire data sharing mechanism is the existence of data silos. Data fragmentation occurs due to multiple technology stacks built within an enterprise to solve multiple problems, resulting in data fragmentation under different components.
In this regard, the lakehouse architecture has become a new solution in solving the problem of data fragmentation. The capabilities of the data lake can unify the data base of users, so as to achieve the effect of data sharing.
On the basis of the data lakehouse technical architecture, data can also exist in the data lake in various formats, and the analysis of the lakehouse can support the different demands of enterprises for data use, and then build their own data assets with higher quality.
From the perspective of various database vendors that do data lakehouse, each has different technical routes, some choose to develop themselves, some are based on open source, and some are product portfolios of their own cloud platforms, but the ultimate purpose is to reduce the flow of data between different platforms.
Domestic replacement of databases is on the way
Since around 2000, commercial database manufacturers have begun to appear in China, and their main representatives are Dameng Data, Renmin Jincang, Shenzhou General, General Data, etc. In recent years, domestic Internet and communication technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei have also accelerated the layout of the database industry, and used the advantages of cloud computing to carry out research and development of related database services.
At present, the overall size of China's database market is relatively low in the global database market, but the number of database vendors is significantly higher than that of other countries and regions in the world. According to CICC Enterprise Credit statistics, in June 2022, there were more than 200 database vendors in China.
The emergence of a large number of Chinese database vendors has brought more possibilities to challenge traditional database giants.
In Gartner's 2023 Magic Quadrant for Databases, Alibaba Cloud's PolarDB is the only Chinese database to enter the Leaders quadrant.
At the same time, four of the ten database vendors mentioned in honor are from China, namely: Oceanbase, Pingcap, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud.
However, it is also necessary to be soberly aware that the current development of domestic databases is still relatively slow, and from the perspective of practical application, it is only used more in the party, government, and military fields, and less in other fields.
According to the data of the "Market Research and Analysis of China's Database Industry and Development Scale** Report" released by Zhiyan Consulting, as of 2022, the localization rate of China's database scale will reach 213%。
In other words, there is still a long way to go for domestic databases to achieve real leadership.
First of all, from the development of databases, it can be seen that this industry needs a long period of technology accumulation, for example, Oracle has a history of more than 40 years since 1978 before it has developed into its current scale.
For example, since x86 replaced minicomputers, DB2's market share has gradually declined and the trend of software and hardware separation has led to the widespread application of Intel and Microsoft's operating systems, and there are opportunities for Oracle and MySQL to develop and grow under this ecosystem.
However, in recent years, the state has actively promoted the development of domestic databases, and the regulatory authorities have successively issued a number of documents, clearly proposing requirements such as "improving the application of new technologies and independent controllability" and "increasing the flexible supply of data center infrastructure".
Especially at the end of September 2022, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) issued the important "State-owned Assets Development Document No. 79", which clearly pointed out that from January 2023, the replacement progress of the information innovation system will be reported to the SASAC at the end of each quarter.
Finally, it is required that by the end of 2027, the information system of all leading enterprises will be replaced safely and reliably.
A series of policies have been introduced to promote the comprehensive construction of domestic databases from application to ecology. At the same time, with the support of various new trends and new technologies, the domestic database industry will further accelerate the development and standardization of the industry.
Only by taking steps can you travel thousands of miles. China's database still has to go through a long process of polishing, and in the new round of scientific and technological revolution, this long road has obviously just begun.
About Tech Cloud Report].
Focus on the original, enterprise-level content expert - science and technology cloud reporting. Founded in 2015, it is one of the top 10** in the cutting-edge enterprise-level IT field. It has been recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and is one of the official designated dissemination of Trusted Cloud and Global Cloud Computing Conference. In-depth original reports on cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other fields.