China's network technology on April 16 (reporter Shan Zhengyu) under the epidemic swept the world, enterprises to accelerate digital transformation and AI industry landing has accelerated. It has to be said that AI plays a key role in fighting the epidemic and promoting the digital transformation of enterprises, but how to improve the efficiency of enterprise digital transformation, integrate AI technology into products and use scenarios in various industries, and enhance the viability of AI enterprises has become a hot spot in the industry and market.
On April 13, Yin Qi, co-founder and CEO of Megvii Technology (hereinafter referred to as "Megvii"), said at the 2022 Megvii Enterprise Business Partner Conference that AIoT has now become a big consensus, a big track, a big market, and the entire industry will usher in a "golden decade" of development. At the same time, AIoT is not only a huge technological change and industrial wave, but also a comprehensive reconstruction of production research, supply chain and market channels.
At this conference, in addition to explaining the future development direction of the enterprise's digital business, Megvii also launched a program called AIoT Ecosystem Partner. Zhao Kang, head of Megvii's enterprise business unit, said in an interview with the media that Megvii is a company that started with an algorithm, and based on the algorithm itself, it is a rich level of products, including intelligent components, intelligent single products and software and hardware integration product groups, which are aimed at a completely different customer base. By obtaining market information feedback to Megvii with different partners, it helps Megvii to continuously optimize its product capabilities, which is a two-way feedback process.
Zhao Kang said: "In the AIoT ecosystem, Megvii is a part of the middle, we need partners in different fields to jointly create AIoT solutions to jointly serve our customer base, so in the AIoT era, it is not who is the mainstay, but co-creation, co-construction, and common service, which is the original intention of Megvii to launch the AIoT ecological partner program."
Shift from a channel provider to a "partner"
The AIoT ecosystem is not layered, but complementary
Since its inception, Megvii's understanding of the AI industry has believed that algorithms, software and hardware should be combined. At this conference, based on how the AIoT ecosystem should be established and what kind of cooperation form the industrial cluster combining AI technology and IoT will be in the future, Megvii handed over a copy of its own answer sheet through the AIoT ecosystem partner program.
According to reports, the core of the AIoT ecosystem partner plan is to work with partners to build an AIoT ecosystem, jointly research AIoT products, and jointly help the AIoT industry land. In other words, Megvii should not only be a catalyst for the digital transformation of enterprises, but also a booster for the development of the entire AIoT industry chain.
Dong Xun, head of customer development of Megvii Enterprise Business Department, pointed out in his speech that "jointly building an AIoT ecosystem" means that Megvii plays different roles in the AIoT ecosystem based on its own capabilities and solutions, and jointly plays different roles in the AIoT ecosystem, jointly creates an ecosystem and establishes an AIoT system.
"AI capabilities include proposing AIoT solutions, establishing AIoT platforms, etc., while partners provide understanding of the industry and support for industry channels, thus complementing Megvii and helping customer enterprises improve the efficiency of digital transformation", according to Dong Xun, "both clear boundaries and expand boundaries" can be understood as the process of Megvii and partners, through the combination of AI capabilities from product upgrades to model upgrades, and finally to capability upgrades. Megvii hopes to help partners transform from channel partners to complementary partners through the "AIoT Ecosystem Partner Program".
Dong Xun, head of customer development of Megvii Enterprise Business Department
Dong Xun pointed out that with the gradual deepening of Megvii's understanding of the AI industry, the current AIoT products and solutions are actually not enough to support customer enterprises' understanding of AI technology, and in the AI industry, no company can make the ai upstream and downstream industry chain through, so to completely solve the AI industry, channels, and solutions, it is necessary for all partners to combine to achieve transformation and interoperability.
Speaking of the ecological strategy of the Megvii Ecological Partner Program, Zhao Kang told China Net Technology that in addition to the need for enterprises to integrate into the ecology in order to have a broader and longer-term development space, in terms of ecological dimension, Megvii will also give partners support in six aspects: consulting, research and development, product level, marketing promotion and technical training and talent construction, comprehensively promote the improvement of partners' capabilities, relying on partners' professional insight into all walks of life, Megvii's technical know-how for AIoT. Together, they help customer companies create value-creating AI products and solutions, which is also the value of a symbiotic partnership.
Therefore, in Megvii's view, the AIoT ecosystem to achieve co-prosperity and symbiosis is not hierarchical but complementary, for Megvii, it is necessary to understand the needs of the industry and customer enterprises through partners; for ecological partners, it is necessary to embrace AIoT new technologies and new products, so that it can make itself more insightful into the needs and pain points of customer enterprises in the wave of digital transformation of the industry. In order to make partners evolve from channel-based to ability-based, it is necessary to change the industry thinking, that is, from channel providers to partners in the community of interests, and partners need to improve industry insight capabilities, closed-loop delivery capabilities and development and expansion capabilities.
The "AI+ industry" is still in the exploration period
The shared AIoT market can bring greater profit returns
It is understood that after the end of the press conference, the recruitment information about the AIoT ecological partner plan has been released on the official website of Megvii at the same time, and the recruitment of partners has been launched nationwide. For the AIoT ecosystem partner type, Megvii divides the partners into three types. For the specific benefits and joining process that partners will enjoy, they can submit an application online as required.
AIoT Ecosystem Partner Program Recruitment Information
It is worth mentioning that in terms of the classification of partner types, we can see the tone of Megvii's AIoT ecosystem partner plan and its determination to establish an AIoT ecosystem.
Specifically, at the regional partner level, for partners who have specific regional resources and channels, but lack standard products, Megvii can provide AIoT software and hardware integration products, and help partners to package them together to customer enterprises and complete the business closed loop. At the level of industry partners, the business is oriented to specific industries such as airports, gas stations, schools, etc., and partners with the ability to expand business opportunities and pre-sales support capabilities of projects in the industry, Megvii can provide closed-loop industry landing solutions to customer enterprises.
At the product solution level, Megvii can provide AI computing power to partners with hardware research and development capabilities and product production capabilities but lack of AI algorithms, and combine Megvii AI algorithms with their hardware products to form their own integrated and landed AIoT hardware products, including but not limited to OEM, ODM or product co-creation.
Zhao Kang, head of Megvii's corporate business unit
For how Megvii will attract partners to join, Zhao Kang said that although AI technology, including the AIoT field, has made great progress so far, at the same time, in many industry applications and scenarios, the "AI+ industry" is still in the exploration period.
This requires technology providers and industry solution providers to continuously communicate with each other and jointly develop industrial applications, so this is how Megvii can coexist and share value with our ecological partners based on its own characteristics.
The market dividend appears
It is time to deepen the integration of the AI technology industry
It is reported that Megvii pointed out in the future outlook of the AIoT ecological partner program that within three years, Megvii expects more partners to join the "AIoT ecological partner program" and rely on the power of the AIoT ecosystem to drive product and service innovation while jointly exploring the digital new land of enterprise space.
The concept of "spatial digitalization" mentioned for the first time by Megvii is based on the three dimensions of policy, industry and enterprise in recent years, and under the background of the era of intelligent Internet of Things, it is guided by an industry AIoT digital transformation direction. Megvii believes that with the rapid development of the current AIoT, it has already subverted the traditional production and living scenarios in the past, such as logistics automation to improve production efficiency, smart office facilities to improve office efficiency, etc., AIoT's reshaping of the space experience is equivalent to accelerating the digital transformation process of enterprises.
So how to understand the concept and essence of spatial digitalization? Zhao Kang told reporters that the AIoT era is actually to the space to efficiency, the same space of people, things, things three elements integration, to create a complete digital space, so as to improve the enterprise or individual production efficiency, office efficiency and operational efficiency, which is currently and may be the future of enterprises and even society into the digital transformation stage of the only way.
As for Megvii's positioning in space digitalization, Zhao Kang pointed out that innovation and co-creation are fundamental, and helping enterprise customers improve the efficiency of space digitization is the fundamental problem that Megvii passes through the technology and products to be solved. According to Zhao Kang, China Net Technology noted in the recruitment information of the AIoT ecosystem partner plan that there are some typical application cases for the digital landing of space.
Source: Megvii official website
Taking the government's epidemic prevention and control and campus security as an example, at present, under the implementation of the "new information means" epidemic prevention measures in Hebei Province, through the face recognition access control integrated machine and AIoT temperature measurement equipment provided by Megvii, to do the deployment of epidemic prevention equipment in Anci District, Gu'an County and other places in Langfang City, so as to cover the deployment area in a wide area, not only to achieve the pre-position of epidemic management, improve the ability of the competent units to control the epidemic, but also to normalize the epidemic prevention and control, and solve the problems of vacuum zone, rear position and manpower shortage in epidemic prevention and control.
Campus security is the "Campus Entrance Smart Security Solution" launched by Megvii and Guangxi Telecom, which has been carried out in an orderly manner under the background of the implementation of the "4+N" campus safety management system issued by the Ministry of Education in Guangxi Province in 2019. After the plan is implemented, teachers and students can complete identity verification, temperature measurement, passage and attendance at the school gate at one time. Even during peak crowds, unimpeded access is ensured. If there are strangers trailing and wandering, they will also issue a reminder and early warning at the first time, so that the school can firmly control the initiative of campus security.
In fact, such AIoT application landing cases are not isolated cases, in recent years, the application of AI technology has long been rid of the basic cognition that public opinion in the past is only used for security management and face recognition, and has long been deeply rooted in medical beauty, community, hospitals, commercial real estate and other industries. At present, from the society to the campus, to the government and individuals, scientific and technological innovation and digital transformation are the future social development trends and directions.
In January this year, the State Council issued the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy, which pointed out that by 2025, the added value of the core industries of the digital economy will account for 10% of gdp. At the same time, in terms of specific task deployment, the plan also emphasizes the key layout direction in optimizing and upgrading digital infrastructure, vigorously promoting industrial digital transformation, accelerating digital industrialization, and continuously improving the digital level of public services.
In the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2022, AI has once again been written into the government work report, becoming the focus area of this year and taking the deployment of scientific and technological innovation as one of the key tasks of the whole year. It should be noted that the report specifically proposes to increase the incentive for enterprise innovation, strengthen the status of enterprise innovation as the main body, give large-scale financial support to enterprise innovation, implement various innovation incentive policies to promote the development of the digital economy, build digital information infrastructure, promote industrial digital transformation, and accelerate the development and cultivation of digital industries such as integrated circuits and artificial intelligence.
It can be seen that these policy measures to support scientific and technological innovation reflect the trend of the AI industry from budding to growth and then to maturity. From the perspective of the industry, unlike the initial development of the Internet economy, the dividends of the digital economy have emerged at this stage, and digital transformation is no longer an option for all aspects of government, enterprises and even personal life scenarios.
Zhao Kang said: "From the enterprise level, Megvii has seen more and more enterprises willing to embrace AI, willing to embrace digitalization, willing to adopt new technologies to improve enterprise efficiency. Therefore, the digital innovation of Chinese enterprises is an inevitable choice under the superposition of multiple factors such as internal and external factors. At present, how to use new technologies such as digitalization and artificial intelligence to improve business efficiency, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and improve management accuracy is also becoming the optimal solution for enterprises to pursue sustainable development. ”
Some industry views believe that with the development trend of AIoT as an information technology in recent years, industrial digital upgrading has spread throughout all walks of life. According to the IDC report, China's digital transformation expenditure reached US$277.6 billion in 2021, an increase of 16.7% year-on-year. It can be seen that in the future wave of digitalization of Chinese enterprises, enterprises around AIoT technology innovation and application will usher in the best development era.