1. The evolution of cloud computing.
Since 2006, the development of cloud computing has gone through a 17-year process, including the embryonic period, the rapid explosion period, the bubble period, and finally the gradual maturity period. Cloud computing is not stagnant, but continues to precipitate, consolidate the foundation, standardize, and usher in a new stage of development.
In the process of planning and designing cloud computing service types such as software as a service (SaaS), cloud computing adheres to the concept of "IT as a service" and continues to evolve and iteratively develop. In this evolutionary process, cloud computing, as a business model, was initially represented by Amazon Web Service (AWS), which gave the excess resources (i.e., computing power) of e-commerce to external customers on demand, forming on-demand and pay-as-you-go billing, similar to water, electricity and gas in daily life and operators' mobile phones. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) builds a service model that focuses on intelligent computing supercomputing centers, virtualization, and software-defined technologies, and is gradually maturing.
In the development process of cloud computing, platform-level capabilities have gradually formed a distinction between application platform as a service (Apaas) and integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and the concept of business platform as a service (Bpaas) has gradually formed in the fields of middleware and database. Among the three layers of cloud computing, the PaaS layer is the most complex and confusing, but it also has the greatest potential for future development. At the same time, software-as-a-service (SaaS), as a business model, emerges with the characteristics of rent-as-sell, on-demand and pay-as-you-go, and multi-tenancy, among which China's SaaS is mainly concentrated in mature fields such as OA, CRM, HR, etc.
To sum up, the development of cloud computing is not only a business model, but also an inevitable product of industrial demand and the development of software and hardware technologies, and is the culmination of the technical system. In order to select, build, and make good use of cloud computing, it is necessary to have a deep understanding of industry and business scenarios, a professional technical R&D team, a complete operation and maintenance and security guarantee, and a mature ecological upstream and downstream collaboration system.
Cloud computing is the cornerstone of digital transformation, and the future digital transformation will be based on cloud as the body and digital intelligence as the use, through cloud computing as the system and base, and comprehensively use artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain and other technologies to solve systemic problems and promote the comprehensive development of industries and businesses.
Second, the essence of the industrial Internet.
The Industrial Internet coordinates the operation, management and resource integration of the industrial chain in the form and mode of the Internet. Although sometimes the concepts of industrial Internet and industrial Internet are confused, whether it is the industrial Internet in the United States or Industry 4 in Germany0, or China's intelligent manufacturing 2025, the core of which is to improve the digital level of various industries, to achieve cost reduction, efficiency increase and industrial upgrading. From 2020 to 2024, according to the estimation of iResearch & Tsinghua Industrial Internet Research Group, the application of industrial Internet will bring an annual GDP increase of 700 billion to 1 trillion yuan to China's economy, and the proportion of contribution to China's GDP growth will also increase significantly.
The industrial Internet not only drives the digital transformation of the entire industry, but also integrates digital technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence to achieve the goal of connecting the industrial chain, capability chain, ecological chain, data chain, and value chain. Through the industrial Internet platform, enterprises in different industries can quickly deploy new applications and services, reduce development and operation and maintenance costs, and promote innovation and development.
The industrial Internet will continue to be vigorously promoted by policies, connecting all links of production, circulation and consumption through the digital chain, supporting first-class decision-making and scheduling, improving the accuracy and real-time performance of the supply side and the demand side, promoting the efficient coordination of the industrial chain, and optimizing the production efficiency and resource allocation of various industries.
3. Commonalities between cloud computing and the industrial Internet.
Cloud computing is an important technical means to realize the industrial Internet, and cloud computing, as one of the important technical means to realize the industrial Internet, is highly unified with the industrial Internet in terms of basic technologies such as data center infrastructure and IaaS that the underlying dependence on. Cloud computing provides elastic computing power, which can be quickly scaled up and down according to the needs of users in different industries to adapt to traffic pressure during peak periods and improve user experience and service availability. The large-scale centralized management of cloud computing also improves the utilization rate of computing resources and reduces industrial costs.
Cloud computing provides more efficient, flexible, and reliable computing infrastructure and services for the industrial Internet, expands application fields, and promotes innovation and development.
Cloud computing and industrial Internet are similar in the design concept and implementation of platform-level capabilities, and both industrial Internet and cloud computing adopt general PaaS layer capabilities in the planning, design, and implementation of platform-level capabilities, especially ApaAs and IPAas. In addition, the design of the industrial Internet combines the commonalities of the industry more deeply in terms of BpaaS and DaaS.
The services provided by the industrial Internet often rely on SaaS, and the service models provided by the industrial Internet mainly include SaaS-based, solution-driven, platform + integrated delivery of key scenarios, etc. Among them, SaaS is the SaaS form of cloud computing, which provides a key service foundation for the industrial Internet.
Cloud computing and the industrial Internet learn from each other in terms of platform operation and maintenance and security management and control systems, and the operation and security management and control systems of cloud computing draw on various industry standards, norms and processes to a considerable extent, including the operator boss system. The industrial Internet platform can learn from the mature experience in the field of cloud computing and jointly build a more complete operation and maintenance and security management system.
Cloud computing accelerates the digital upgrade of the industrial InternetThrough cloud computing, platform enterprises can output digital capabilities for each node in the industrial Internet with centralized technology platforms and data platforms, drive the digital upgrading of the entire industry, realize technological empowerment from industrial infrastructure, and achieve high-quality development. Cloud computing also provides the support of cutting-edge technologies such as big data analysis and artificial intelligence, and expands the construction of key industrial application systems.
The service ecology of cloud computing and the scenario-based application ecology of the industrial Internet have their commonalities, and the industrial Internet is similar to the service ecology of the public cloud in many aspects such as ecosystem construction, ecological marketing, and service-oriented operation. This includes the connection between platform enterprises and the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, the circulation and sharing of data, and the collaboration between service providers.
4. The difference between cloud computing and the industrial Internet The surname of the industrial Internet is "industry", and the surname of cloud computing is "digital technology" Cloud computing takes digital technology as a business model of services, while the industrial Internet pays more attention to the development of the industry. Cloud computing can be understood as "N + Cloud", where N represents the industry, in order to realize the cloudification of the industry; The industrial Internet can be interpreted as "industry +", emphasizing the combination of industry and Internet technology to realize the digital transformation of the industry.
Cloud computing and industrial Internet are divided into different waysCloud computing is generally divided into vertical IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, as well as horizontal public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud, while the industrial Internet pays more attention to the division of different industries and emphasizes the synergistic relationship between industries.
Cloud computing and industrial Internet focus on different aspects of ecological chain construction, cloud computing ecological construction pays more attention to the full stack of technology, the territory and categories of digital technology providers, while the industrial Internet pays more attention to macro decision-making and analysis in the industry, as well as the effective use of data value in the industry, covering the whole process from production to consumption.
In general, cloud computing and the industrial Internet have similarities in terms of technology, service models, and ecological chains, but there are some differences in their development concepts and key directions. The Industrial Internet places more emphasis on industrial development and digital transformation, while cloud computing pays more attention to the service model and business model of digital technology. The combination of the two will provide a broader space for the development of the digital economy.