About Huawei, a secret and great thing
There is not a single Huawei person who does not know "516", it is the end of everything and the beginning of everything. Since then, Huawei has been abruptly divided into two eras, what kind of eras are the two? At that time, it was not clear, but now, it may be Huawei with hardware, and Huawei with both hardware and software.
In 2019, a few days after the US announced the ban, some overseas manufacturers stationed in Huawei immediately withdrew, including Oracle database and ERP software, various production tools and other software consultants, Huawei business systems built on commercial software in the past few decades, in danger.
There is no historical precedent for targeting a commercial company with national power; In the past, Huawei was not known for software, even the head software company, with the power of one to make up for many software shortcomings, there is no precedent in the world, even if it only meets its own basic usable needs.
Vultures hovered in the sky, watching the tiger, and Huawei's 200,000 employees were running at great speed, like a well-trained team, to go to a secret battle.
Huawei launched the "Sanyapo Battle" in 2020, the core purpose is to maintain its own production and operation, to achieve de-Americanization of self-research, according to Titanium Media App, the "Sanyapo Battle" mainly includes five levels, involving hardware (X86->ARM), operating system (Linux/Windows->Euler), database (Oracle->GaussDB), middleware, application software.
Middle-aged Huawei embarked on a new software journey. All Huawei people are holding their breath, just to prove to them that Huawei can break through.
The outside world has no way of knowing how much confidence Huawei has, and some Huawei people are also secretly drumming in their hearts, after all, the difficulty of the underlying basic software and hardware, everyone in China's IT industry knows. Fortunately, Huawei is not starting from scratch, nor is it alone, in the context of promoting independent innovation in China, Huawei has gradually gained through self-research and joint innovation.
From the end of 2022, Huawei has shown alternative capital. In the "Wujiang Breakthrough", Huawei released 11 software and hardware development tools in a row, completely freeing itself from dependence on Western product development tools. In the face of the interruption of supply and service of core enterprise operation and management systems such as ERP, Huawei successfully replaced it with its self-developed MetaERP. Combined with GaussDB, Huawei's first software-hardware synergy and full-stack independent distributed database officially launched this time, Huawei's software footprint is becoming more and more complete.
Two "crazy" attempts
Since the nineties, Huawei's old ERP and database have adopted Oracle. The old ERP system has completely experienced Huawei's development history, supported Huawei's development from a local company to a global company, and accompanied by multiple business changes such as IPD, ISC, IFS, etc., basically meeting Huawei's development needs.
Before the replacement, the old ERP system covered Huawei's 170+ countries and 250+ legal entities around the world, with an average daily mass number of transactions, such as 760,000 sales order lines, 210,000 invoices payable, and 15 million accounting entry lines.
"The business also has complaints about Oracle, such as slow accounting and settlement, Oracle's unified response is that the product itself is so, and Oracle will not do customized transformation for a company. Realistically speaking, Huawei never thought of replacing it before '516', because it was too complicated, there were so many peripheral systems, and many business objects and management units within ERP were strongly coupled, involving the whole body, which no one dared to do. Liu Zhenyu, chief technical architect of Huawei's MetaERP, recalled.
When Huawei decided to replace Oracle with self-developed ERP, the first problem was the selection of the database, the ERP system strongly relied on database capabilities, Huawei initially chose the Malaysian branch as a pilot, in the case of a small amount of data, the use of open source PostgreSQL database.
According to the MetaERP team's vision, under the minimum of changes, it is a safe road to slowly precipitate capabilities, polish products, gradually replace, replace overseas branches, and then move forward slowly.
However, Huawei's senior management directly put a big move on the MetaERP team, "Don't engage in overseas countries, first get the largest and most complex China region." The business in China accounts for more than 60% of the company's ERP business volume, even if the database is divided into databases and tables, the single-database data storage of the open source database is at most T-level, which still cannot solve the problem.
With tight time and heavy tasks, GaussDB database meets the requirements of MetaERP with absolute hard core strength, and can be expanded from single-database terabytes to petabytes of data in terms of capacity alone.
For example, on the last day of Huawei's quarter, the business volume may reach 10 times or even 15 times the usual amount, and the MetaERP team asked the GaussDB database to achieve 5 times the performance of the historical peak of Huawei's ERP system, and finally after the joint creation of both parties, the GaussDB database achieved 20 times the performance of the historical peak.
Using the old ERP, it took more than 2 hours for Huawei's asset depreciation engine to run the results once, and after replacing the MetaERP supported by GaussDB, the results were run in two minutes.
After the launch of MetaERP, in addition to greatly improving efficiency, it also opened up new imagination space, such as intelligent data analysis, which would not have been thought of in the Oracle era, and began to appear on the MetaERP team's demand list.
In terms of stability, MetaERP and GaussDB databases also have a "crazy" thing. In July 2022, one day after Huawei's self-developed MetaERP was launched, a Huawei board member came to the R&D team to express condolences and asked, can you cut off the main database on site and try a standby node?
"At the time, I just thought it was a joke, in theory, the GaussDB database adopts a primary and two-standby architecture, which can achieve RTO (Recovery Time Objective) equal to 0, and the business is switched, but frankly, we have never done it when we used Oracle before, and it is very troublesome in case the business crashes." Liu Zhenyu said.
The MetaERP team resolutely stopped the primary node while apprehensive, and the GaussDB database standby node was seamlessly connected, and the reliability was tested. Su Guangniu, General Manager of HUAWEI CLOUD Database Service Product Dept, said that in the process of replacing Huawei's database scenarios, HUAWEI CLOUD also conducted a large number of usability tests, such as powering up cabinets and storage rooms, which are sufficient to meet the availability requirements of key industries.
"GaussDB database ready"
Looking back on 2020, Su Guangniu's most direct feeling is that the situation is tense, and at the "Battle of Sanyapo", Huawei reached a consensus, "Even if the GaussDB we made is not used, Huawei must solve the problem of using its own database." Despite the unfavorable factors such as the epidemic, Huawei's database team has not reduced investment, but has increased it.
By the end of 2022, within Huawei, Huawei Device Cloud Service and Huawei Group IT have adopted GaussDB database, which has been widely used in the financial industry for external customers, supporting the core business of state-owned banks such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Postal Savings Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China, in addition to serving key industry enterprises such as the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Finance, CNOOC, and the State Pipe Network.
In Su Guangniu's words, "the GaussDB database is ready."
One of the major advantages of GaussDB database lies in joint creation, Huawei needless to say, taking the database SQL parsing of ERP scenarios as an example, before optimization, SQL statements in the open source database appeared in the GaussDB database, and there were a lot of slow SQL.
Huawei's GaussDB database team specially collected all the slow SQL in the ERP scenario, ran SQL tests under different conditions all day long, collected all change results, and solved the performance optimization problem by gradually tuning with different actuators.
In terms of high performance to meet the core financial transaction scenarios, the Ustore storage engine jointly created by Huawei and China Merchants Bank allows the system to maintain stable performance for a long time under high concurrency and frequent updates, and truly achieves all-weather jitter-free compared with other similar products in China.
At the O&M level, as the world's first AI-Native database, GaussDB provides an intelligent database experience from application development to O&M, and has improved fault diagnosis efficiency by 5 times in the co-creation with Postal Savings Bank of China.
On June 7, at the Huawei Global Smart Finance Summit 2023, HUAWEI CLOUD officially launched GaussDB, the first software-hardware synergy and full-stack autonomous distributed database in China.
Zhang Pingan, Executive Director of Huawei and CEO of HUAWEI CLOUD, revealed that in the future, GaussDB will continue to cultivate financial scenarios and become a better choice for financial customer databases through comprehensive innovation, moving from the financial industry to other industries with high database requirements, and from China's innovative scenarios to the global customer market, giving the world a better choice.
Su Guangniu also mentioned that many domestic financial companies still have a large amount of Oracle and MySQL data, they are worried about future use and other issues, Huawei will further optimize the product, without changing or less changes to the application, with engineering methods to solve the replacement problem, to achieve better economy.
HUAWEI CLOUD, software highland
Why is it difficult to do basic software such as databases and ERP?
Su Guangniu said that the theoretical foundation of the database has been laid, there will not be a subversive theory, and then all database products to do disruptive innovation, the difficulty is in engineering innovation, performance, stability, reliability, etc., the key question is how long it takes, how much manpower is invested, and whether it can be persistent, trade-offs and decisions, is a difficult process.
Liu Zhenyu said that Huawei's review of MetaERP summarizes four simple success factors: thorough principle, breakthrough technology, strict specifications, and exquisite craftsmanship.
The underlying logic of the ERP system is extremely complex, Huawei returns to the essence of enterprise resource planning to solve the principle problem, Huawei understands various scenarios and logics such as global business and taxation, and it is difficult for vendors without relevant accumulation to do a good job.
At the level of technological breakthroughs, some new technologies and independent innovation requirements can be fully verified and implemented by HUAWEI CLOUD, process IT and other departments.
In terms of strict specifications, MetaERP has developed a set of standard architecture, technology and engineering methodology, according to the template and standard method, every step is done in place, and MetaERP is assembled into a seamless vehicle to create high-quality products.
At the level of exquisite craftsmanship, the lowest number of people is used to do the highest quality things, automatic testing, batch switching, online collaboration, and build MetaERP implementation engineering capabilities.
The basic software is a track with long slopes and thick snow, there are no shortcuts to take, but there is a window of opportunity. Traditional IT infrastructure has shifted from on-premise on-premises deployment to cloud-based cloud deployment, and then gradually to cloud-native cloud native, which has become a consensus, GaussDB database and MetaERP are distributed architecture based on cloud native.
Sooner or later, we will eventually get rid of the "stuck neck" situation, and Huawei will go one step faster. Flourishing the industrial ecosystem through open hardware and open software is also an opportunity and path for Huawei to make software.
At the GaussDB release site, HUAWEI CLOUD released the Database Partner Support Plan with 17 software partners, including CLP Jinxin, Advanced Datacom, and China Information, as well as 7 service partners including Yingfang, Palmshu, Wok, Aishu, Chinasoft, Massive, and Yihai. HUAWEI CLOUD provides five types of benefits, support programs, and rich marketing resources for three types of partners: database software partners, service partners, and digital transformation consulting, and system integration partners.
Database, ERP and other key technology nodes of the information technology industry, the importance of digital China is self-evident, the database is on the operating system, under the application, with the database as a gripper, a considerable proportion of problems can be solved, China's basic software to not be "stuck in the neck", should be like Huawei GaussDB data, "to the world a better choice".
Zhang Pingan also mentioned that "'giving the world a better choice' hides another meaning, and when Huawei broke through that 'hurdle', it found that the combination of China's application scenarios and root technology will definitely become another better choice in the world, but people are not doing it now."
He also said, "We have no interest in all mid-range, low-end, and small-capacity databases, and there are many database manufacturers in China that can meet them, but as long as it is a difficult scenario, we are willing to be the first to go." This is the positioning of our database, even if it may be a little bit on the spire, the revenue and profit brought are not large, we are willing to do it."
In the process of Huawei software breakthrough, cloud computing is a key variable, which is also the opportunity given to Huawei by the times, overseas manufacturers such as AWS, Microsoft, etc., are also using the cloud to reconstruct IT software and hardware, impact the old IT system, Oracle itself is also moving towards cloudification, through cloud computing, Huawei can move the starting line forward as much as possible, standing on the upper hand of the technology industry trend.
In the discussion of great companies in the 21st century, most of them are overseas companies, and most of them are software companies, and when Huawei is forced by external forces to become a company with both hardware and software, he should be put into the discussion of great companies. Huawei's self-developed software is not only to meet its own development, but also to solve the worries of China's "thousands of Huawei" to a certain extent.
On the one hand, more than 30 years after its establishment, it is inconceivable that a giant company can turn its course, build software that it was not good at in the past, and ensure the continuity of its own production and operation; On the other hand, Huawei's export of full-stack capabilities of software and hardware through cloud computing is of unique significance under the established trend of independent innovation in digital China.
HUAWEI CLOUD, as the output of its software strategy, draws the vision of basic software, which is not an opportunity to create another Huawei.