The new trend of China's digital economy: from digital going to sea to going to sea

Figure: Figure worm

Source: 21tech

Author: Yang Qingqing

Editor: Zhang Weixian

The digital economy is showing a new trend. Recently, Amazon Cloud Technology released the trend of Chinese enterprises going to the cloud and going to sea, pointing out that China's overseas related to the digital economy is expanding from "digital going to sea" to "going to sea digital".

The so-called digital going to sea is also the mainstream of the first wave of Chinese enterprises going to sea, which is reflected in the development of digital technology and the Internet-based flock to various application scenarios, new formats and new models, and push their own products and service platforms overseas. This was true of early internet social networking, video and short videos, Internet tools, etc.

In recent years, the trend of going overseas digital has become more and more obvious, which is reflected in the all-round digital transformation and innovation of overseas businesses in traditional industries with the help of digital technology.

"Today we see that traditional enterprises are also starting to go to sea, and there are several trends. First of all, cross-border e-commerce has opened up a new path for traditional manufacturing to go to sea, and the digitalization and intelligent upgrading of traditional manufacturing has also begun to transform. Li Xiaomang, general manager of Amazon Cloud Technology China Commercial Market Division, said.

Speaking of the challenges of Chinese enterprises going to sea, Liang Yan, general manager of Amazon Cloud Technology China's digital native business unit, said bluntly that the current entire Chinese enterprises going to sea has passed the stage of barbaric growth, and what enterprises have to do is to refine operations and comprehensively consider factors including compliance and data security.

Six trends

According to Amazon Cloud Technology, Chinese companies have shown six major trends in going to sea.

In terms of regions, from Europe and the United States to Africa, Chinese companies have blossomed everywhere. 60% of the overseas business of overseas enterprises has involved more than three continents or regions; Southeast Asia, Europe and North America still occupy the preferred destination for Chinese enterprises to go to sea, while emerging regions such as South America, Africa and the Middle East are becoming the "new blue ocean" for Chinese enterprises to go to sea.

In terms of overseas power, Chinese enterprises are completing the upgrade from "system" to "wisdom". Once Chinese enterprises went to sea to export labor-intensive and capital-intensive products, they are now turning to the upgrade road of technology-driven, innovative thinking and brand leadership, realizing the transformation from quantity to quality, and also from exporting "Chinese cost" and "Chinese scale" to the world, and to exporting "Chinese technology", "Chinese brand" and "Chinese experience" to the world.

In addition, new energy vehicles are becoming a new track for Chinese companies to go to sea. Li Xiaomang said that with the wave of electrification sweeping the global automotive industry, both traditional car companies and new car-making forces represented by new energy vehicles are actively laying out overseas and hoping to achieve curve overtaking.

At the same time, Chinese companies going to sea have also shown changes from to C to B. From general-purpose enterprise-level services such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, collaborative office, and human resources, to specific services required by vertical industries, to IT applications such as IT operation and maintenance management, databases, and big data analysis, the enterprise service field is becoming a new hot spot in the sea.

Even some overseas enterprises that originally faced the C-end have also developed their own experience in serving C-end customers into new services on the B-side of the service and expanded their business to the B-end.

"When the first wave of Chinese enterprises went digital to sea, scenarios such as games, the Internet, and social networking were all to C and enjoyed the demographic dividend," Li Xiaomang pointed out, now that platform traffic may not be so rapidly growing, so enterprises have begun to carry out a lot of accurate analysis and delivery, and more use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things and other technologies to enhance product value.

From the perspective of the size of enterprises, more and more small and medium-sized enterprises are emerging in the process of going to sea. According to the data disclosed by Amazon Cloud Technology, among the enterprises that have gone to sea, large enterprises account for 63% and small and medium-sized enterprises account for 37%; among the enterprises that plan to go to sea, large enterprises account for 35%, small and medium-sized enterprises account for 65%, and small and medium-sized enterprises show a strong willingness to go to sea.

From the perspective of the path, if in the past many companies gradually embarked on the road to the sea after growing up locally, then now more start-ups are aiming at going to sea. From gaming, developer services, and SaaS to hardware/mobile phones, e-commerce, and more, more and more startups are born global. According to the 2021 Accenture China Unicorn Study, 45% of unicorn companies believe that overseas expansion is crucial, of which 82% plan to expand overseas within 24 months.

"We see that many enterprises are very small in size among our overseas customers, they are born global, they have no business in China at all, they are making seas." Liang Yan analysis said, "They themselves rely on the 'cloud' to quickly expand their ideas and business models to the rest of the world." ”

Compliance challenges

In the process of Chinese enterprises going to sea, they also face many challenges.

"At present, the entire sea has passed the stage of barbaric growth, and it still needs to be refined." Liang Yan said bluntly. First and foremost is security compliance, "all security compliance takes into account how to meet business requirements without leaking private data." ”

This means that the challenge for enterprises is not only to change the data level, but also to change the business model. "From a global perspective, how our business model can control cost advantages across regions and different countries is not only a technical issue, nor just a business issue, but also a comprehensive business model." Liang Yan said.

In his view, the current security compliance faced by enterprises going overseas is divided into two levels, including security compliance on the cloud and security compliance of business models. "In terms of cloud compliance, Amazon Cloud Technology has achieved compliance certification for local data security and other aspects in all major overseas regions around the world, as well as certification in different vertical industries, thereby helping customers significantly reduce the cost and complexity of cloud compliance."

"Regarding the security compliance of cloud computing, we rely more on Amazon cloud technology to do it." In an interview with the media, including 21st Century Business Herald, Xi Yuan, vice president of Huiliang Technology, said.

In addition to compliance on the cloud, the company's own business compliance needs to be further improved. Xi Yuan said that as a developer technology service platform that mainly provides advertising and marketing technology products, Huiliang Technology attaches great importance to the protection of user data assets. At present, Huiliang Technology and its sub-brands have completed compliance actions including GDPR compliance upgrades, ISO/IEC 27001 certification, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

At the same time, Huiliang Technology will also introduce privacy computing technology in the process of using data. "We use this kind of one-party or two-party data, combined with our three parties to optimize the advertising effect, but our ultimate purpose is not to obtain this data, for us, this data is not particularly valuable, we use this data more to optimize the advertising effect."

Editor: Lu Taoran