On March 12, when li Huaqing, a reporter from the Economic Observer, was supposed to be a relaxing weekend, and a message that "the US software Figma cut off the supply of Chinese companies sanctioned by the United States, such as DJI and Huawei", spread rapidly on the Internet.
Screenshots of online transmission show that Figma informed DJI by email that because DJI is on the US sanctions list, therefore, according to US law, Figma can no longer provide DJI with access to the software, Figma has begun to freeze DJI's account, DJI will not be able to access files through Figma, but Figma will send files back to DJI by mail or other means in the next two weeks, Figma will not delete DJI's files, if DJI is removed from the US sanctions list in the future, DJI access may be restored.
This information has not only raised concerns about companies such as DJI, but also triggered a new round of scrutiny and discussion about software autonomy and security.
On March 14, this reporter verified the information of the supply cut off by Figma to DJI and Huawei, but as of press time, neither company has officially responded to relevant rumors. People close to DJI told this reporter that DJI did encounter figma ban accounts, but it can be properly resolved at present, and "cold treatment" is the biggest protection for itself at this stage.
Figma's official website introduced, Figma is a support for multi-person collaboration of interface design tools, a number of designers told this newspaper reporter, Figma in the design circle is a more famous and word-of-mouth tool, Figma cut off the news of some Chinese companies after the news came out, some of the designers in the use of Figma have been looking for domestic alternatives.
Cut-off and substitution
Sugar Sugar is a UI designer and a loyal user of Figma. She first knew Figma because of the recommendation of her industry predecessors, and after using sketch, AdobeXD and Figma, the three most mainstream design tools in the world (all three tools are provided by American manufacturers), she believes that Figma is the best to use. But after seeing the news that Figma was cut off from DJI, she began to contact Instant Design and MasterGo on March 14, although she still has normal access to Figma.
"The situation is forced." Sugar Sugar told this reporter, "I would like to support domestic software, but I hope that domestic software can also be as easy to use as Figma." ”
In the design circle, there are not a few designers like Sugar Sugar, and another designer, Taada, considers herself a heavy user of Figma and regards Figma as a necessity, but she is already in contact with MasterGo.
"Figma's behavior has definitely caused a lot of uneasiness to many designers, design teams, and Internet companies in China. And it's a trend, probably just the beginning. In recent years, Sino-US relations have not been very good, the previous Sino-US trade war, the recent US sanctions against Russia, and our awareness of our own information protection are getting stronger and stronger, which has led to the Chinese people relying more on domestic software. Working designer Xiao H told this reporter.
Tiantian is a personal front-end designer, he told this reporter that he once used Figma, about a month ago began to use real-time design, he feels that the real-time design and Figma is not much different, and Figma because the server is deployed overseas, in the country if not through the WAY of VPN access, will affect figma response speed, in addition, after working for a long time, designers will mostly have a set of self-use component library, Using Figma requires the purchase of a pro version to use the features that components share across projects, and this fee is too expensive for everyday people as individual designers. In contrast, every day feels that instant design is more affordable, and the operating company is a start-up and enthusiastic service.
The reporter of this newspaper saw in the user exchange group designed in real time that the company's customer service is almost 24 hours online to answer questions and solve problems encountered by users. The company behind the real-time design is called Beijing Xueyun Ruichuang Technology Co., Ltd., and Qixinbao information shows that the enterprise was founded in 2016 with a registered capital of only 212,500 yuan and is a small and micro enterprise.
The staff of instant design told this reporter that instant design is a free tool that does not limit the functions or number of users to use, and the subsequent paid exploration is mainly focused on commercial materials and privatization deployment.
But at the same time, TianTian believes that in terms of community ecology, "Figma has completed the domestic design software." ”
Little H is a working designer who worked in the United States, started using Figma in 2018, and is also a heavy user of Figma, before using Figma, she used sketch. Xiao H told this reporter that the reason for switching to Figma is because the design team is facing several problems that sketch cannot solve, such as the synchronous update of files by team designers, the delivery of remote cooperation, the version management of design files, the management of design component libraries, etc. After investigating several tools, figma was selected, so far, Xiao H still feels that Figma is a good design tool.
But since the end of last year, Small H began to migrate to MasterGo, compared to Figma, MasterGo has a clear benefit for domestic design teams is to provide privatization deployment: "For large companies, big manufacturers are more willing to take design assets in their own hands and deploy design tools on their own servers, so that it is safer and will not be subject to people." This is why many companies have not yet chosen design tools for online collaboration, preferring local storage. Little H said.
Little H recalled that she also had an adaptation period when she migrated from Figma to MasterGo, but she was very quick to get started, and basically after two or three days she could work normally. In the view of Small H, Figma is not a necessary tool, in terms of function, MasterGo and it is not much different, the gap between the two is mainly reflected in performance, such as smoothness, and such as MasterGo and real-time design have set up the community, but due to the short time on the line, the material resources are not rich enough figma. But she could feel that MasterGo was getting better and better.
Examine software autonomy
For DJI's designers, Figma's cut was abrupt. People close to DJI told this reporter that as early as 2020, DJI was included in the entity list by the United States. So why did Figma choose this point in time to cut off supply? One possible backdrop is that on March 14, Yang Jiechi, member of the Politburo of the COMMUNIST Party of China and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, met with Sullivan, assistant to the US president for national security affairs, in Rome, Italy.
During the Sino-US trade friction in recent years, there have been many cases of US software supply to Chinese enterprises and Chinese institutions. In June 2020, the United States banned some Chinese companies and universities from using MATLAB software through the Entity List. MATLAB software, as the global industrial automation control system design and verification, signal communication and image processing standard software, has been an international science and engineering common development software, cut off matlab, some Chinese enterprises industrial technology development and university talent training have an impact.
A CEO of a company engaged in the industrial Internet said in a recent speech that he had used MATLAB in school, and it was difficult to find a replacement for MATLAB in the market, and for teachers and students in colleges and universities, not being able to use MATLAB would also affect the publication of papers.
Although Huawei did not respond to whether it was affected by the Fig-ma supply cut, according to the understanding of this reporter, Huawei has experienced the supply cut of foreign software companies. In November 2021, this reporter heard Tao Jingwen, director of Huawei and president of quality process IT, at a corporate event that in 2019, Huawei's ERP software that huawei used for about 30 years faced manufacturers to stop service and stop technical support, and Huawei had to replace it. "In the process of changing, we found that it was really difficult to change this thing, it was impossible to use the original software and application architecture, I have communicated with many enterprises, and the most I hear is that someone tells me that 'absolutely impossible, you can't do it', but I have no way back, I have to do it." Tao Jingwen said.
Although in the field of industrial software, management software has been the strength of Chinese manufacturers, but in history, there are still existing Chinese enterprises at the beginning of the use of domestic ERP software, with the complexity of the business, switched to the use of foreign SAP, the industry called this phenomenon "reverse localization". Huawei is a chinese enterprise with a very prominent business volume and complexity, and it is indeed difficult to find a management software that can perfectly undertake Huawei's business in a short period of time.
Tao Jingwen introduced that Huawei's ERP domestic replacement process is divided into three steps, one is to maintain stability, the second is to decouple, and the third is to replace the new. First of all, to ensure that after the foreign manufacturers cut off the supply, the use of existing resources on hand is not affected, and then the business grafted to the foreign ERP system for many years is split one by one, and then transferred to the domestic software, system, and platform, in November 2021, Huawei has reached the stage of replacement.
The supply cut-off behavior of foreign manufacturers has made some enterprises actively or passively look for domestic alternatives.
Kingdee International (0268. HK) is a relatively old listed company engaged in enterprise management software in China, and Xu Shaochun, chairman and CEO of Kingdee International in 2021, has said many times in public that China's large enterprise management software market has ushered in a wave of domestic substitution. On March 17, 2022, when Kingdee International held a performance conference, Kingdee China President Zhang Yong introduced to this reporter that in the past two years, Kingdee International has helped 102 large Chinese companies to complete the domestic substitution of core applications or comprehensive domestic substitution, including Huawei, Yunnan Tobacco, Hisense, Shagang and so on. Zhang Yong believes that in the next three years, Kingdee International may have a more prominent performance in the large enterprise market.
Industrial software dilemma
Figma's supply cutout has also sparked a new round of concerns about the prospects for industrial software development online.
The "China Industrial Software Industry White Paper (2020)" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by the China Industrial Technology Software Industry Alliance in June 2021 pointed out that although the current definition of industrial software in the industry has not been unified, there are multiple definitions, but the judgment of industrial software can grasp two points, one is the actual content - the technology/knowledge in the software is dominated by industrial content; the second is the final role - software directly adds value to industrial processes and products. From this point of view, Figma and Figma's domestic competitors are not really industrial software.
Users familiar with Figma, MasterGo and instant design also told this reporter that they should not be counted as industrial software, but only UI design software in the Internet industry. Xiao H told this reporter that Figma and MasterGo do not provide 3D services, interlaced like a mountain, want to design industrial products, or use professional industrial software. The staff of instant design also told reporters that real-time design does not provide 3D rendering, which is not the same logic as industrial design software.
It is worth pointing out that although the supply of Figma is easier for domestic designers to find domestic alternatives, in the field of industrial software, the situation of "card neck" is quite serious. The above white paper mentioned that 95% of the R & D and design industrial software used in China depends on imports, 70% of the operation and maintenance service industrial software depends on imports, although in the production and manufacturing and operation management of industrial software, domestic manufacturers in the domestic market share of not less than 50%, but in the high-end market of these two types of industrial software, domestic manufacturers still do not have an advantage.
Wang Hexiang, an associate researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who studies advanced manufacturing technology, analyzed to this reporter that China's industrial software is not strong enough, mainly for two reasons: First, in the past, domestic enterprises did not pay enough attention to the development of industrial software, because the development of industrial software is a thankless thing, easy to use, can be widely recognized industrial software needs to be verified and improved by actual production, which is a difficult opportunity to get, when enterprises find, On the other hand, there is a Matthew effect in the industrial software industry, and only the more people use it, the more improvement suggestions can be put forward for it, and it will obtain more users and form a positive feedback and a good ecology.
The above white paper also pointed out that the research and development of industrial software is different from software in the general sense, and the research and development technology threshold of industrial software is high, the hardware conditions are expensive, the reliability requirements are high, and compound talents are required. It is estimated that the R&D cycle of large-scale industrial software generally takes 3 to 5 years, and it takes about 10 years to be recognized by the market, and the annual R&D investment of ANSYS, the world's largest CAE manufacturer, is about 2 billion yuan. These factors have led to higher industry barriers to industrial software, and in the 80s and 90s of the last century, foreign industrial software has experienced a stage of rising and conquering, and today's head industrial software, almost every one of them has dozens of mergers and acquisitions records.
(The designers' names in the text, Sugar Sugar, Tiantian, Tiantian, and Xiao H, are pseudonyms)
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