Shen Jianyuan/Text
In the face of the vigorous development of AIGC technology represented by ChatGPT, governments at all levels, various industries, and every enterprise are facing new opportunities and challenges. There is no doubt that AI has brought another round of opportunities for productivity leaps, how to adapt to the wide range of application scenarios in the mainland, consolidate the technical foundation, make up for the shortcomings of the industry, activate data elements, and explore intelligent applications, which will become an important topic in the next golden decade of China's digital economy development?
On June 9, New H3C Group, a subsidiary of Unigroup, held the 2023 NAVIGATE Leader Summit. Yu Yingtao, Chairman of Unigroup and President and CEO of New H3C Group, said in his keynote speech entitled "Intensive Cultivation and Pragmatism, Wisdom for the Times", "Digital technology has ushered in a new moment of transmutation. In the AIGC era, with the wide application of large-scale computing power clusters, the infrastructure capabilities of large models will be the display of the overall collaboration power integrating data computing, network linking, and computing power scheduling. ”
According to the Gartner report, the global IT services market will reach $1.36 trillion in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 9.1%. In the AI era, how do enterprises cope with business competition and technical challenges in a complex environment? How complete is the development goal of New H3C to achieve "100 billion revenue" enterprises by 2025? What was the performance of each business segment in the first half of the year?
Regarding the above issues, Yu Yingtao frankly said in an interview that the impact of the epidemic and the impact of various uncertainties such as the slowdown in economic growth, "However, thanks to the in-depth implementation of a series of measures, the company's performance has maintained a rapid growth trend in recent years: net profit increased from 2.2 billion yuan in 2016 to 3.73 billion yuan in 2022; operating income increased from 21.09 billion yuan in 2016 to 49.81 billion yuan in 2022, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.5%. It is nearly twice the growth rate of China's ICT market during the same period. At present, New H3C's goal of achieving 100 billion revenue by 2025 remains unchanged, and it hopes to recover and grow rapidly in the second half of the year. ”
According to internal data from New H3C, in 2022, the revenue of New H3C's strategic key customer business increased by 33.8%, and the share of each product including enterprise-level WLAN, SDN software, blade servers, etc. is at the forefront of the market. The operator's business has achieved 38% growth, and major breakthroughs have been made in the three major scenarios of operators' backbone networks, metro networks, and 5G bearer networks, especially the iconic, high-end routers and core routers have been applied on a large scale, which has significantly increased the stickiness of our cooperation with operators. In addition, the Internet business grew by 10%. Government cloud revenue increased by 60%.
2023 is the first year that AI enters commercial use. Previously, at the Navigator Summit in 2020, New H3C released the AI in All strategy and announced the embedding of artificial intelligence into all product lines. From the digital era to the AI era, what capabilities does New H3C need to match the disruptive innovation in the AI era?
As an IT service solution provider in the field of digitalization, New H3C has many years of professional experience in serving government and enterprise customers. At the same time, as one of the few ICT enterprises in China that can provide end-to-end complete solutions, New H3C understands the industry's demand for computing terminal products and services. Yu Yingtao said, "New H3C hopes to use its accumulation and accumulation in the field of digital technology and artificial intelligence to accelerate the exploration of AIGC-related applications. Through the research of cloud native technology, deep cultivation of customer application scenarios, with pragmatic concepts to create leading digital solutions, through the continuous evolution of digital brain, accelerate the intelligent upgrade of digital transformation. ”
During the Navigator Summit, New H3C released a number of new products created for AI. Including AI servers for large model training; The world's first 51.2T, 800G CPO silicon optical data center switch, and the AoFei computing power platform that supports large computing power scheduling. The training time of the AI server large model can be increased by 70%, and it supports full liquid cooling, and will be supplied in bulk in July. 800G CPO silicon optical data center switch, which originally required 800 switches to train a large model, now only 100 switches; The AoFei computing power platform can support 8,000 nodes of computing power scheduling, shortening the concurrent training time by 50%.
Zhang Li, Senior Vice President of New H3C Group and President of Industry BG, said, "In the past, New H3C focused on scenarios and created many integrated solutions, and had an in-depth understanding of the real operation of more industries. The explosion of AI applications has brought more industries to the opportunity to reshape. The investment of leading enterprises in various industries is strengthening, which is a very good opportunity for New H3C. ”
The scale of the digital industry is huge, and the sinking market contains huge business opportunities. However, the digital capabilities of customers in the sinking market are weak, and it is difficult to match capabilities, systems, and funds. According to Wang Xin, vice president of New H3C Group and president of Commercial BG, "The real problem in expanding the prefecture-level market is the sinking of capabilities, which requires platform construction and talent allocation." "The former determines depth and breadth, while the latter determines sustainability, both require precipitated technologies and applications. Wang Xin said, "New H3C will form a business consortium with partners to deliver AI capabilities to customers in the commercial market, so that enterprises can truly enjoy the dividends of digital transformation." ”
With the new era of artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT in full swing, enterprises also need goals that match future development.
Yu Yingtao believes that "in the era of artificial intelligence, technology is not a problem, but more need to find a business model that can adapt to the current society." It takes the imagination of entrepreneurs to empower industries and usher in new disruptions and innovations. He said that New H3C will not participate in the competition of general large models, but will focus on vertical industries and regions.
To this end, the private domain large model released by New H3C, Baiye Lingxi LinSeer, mainly focuses on the industry, fits AI, focuses on the industry's vertical application of the private domain large model, through cooperation with partners and local governments, according to customer needs, tailors AI capabilities, and provides secure customization of exclusive private domain services. At the same time, New H3C launched the "AIGC Open Strategy", which not only supports the model of "Baiye Lingxi + New H3C ICT Infrastructure Framework" to ensure data security and achieve optimal cooperation; At the same time, it also supports the model of "customer-selected large model + New H3C ICT infrastructure" to meet various needs.
"The establishment of the private domain model, the construction of infrastructure, and the solution of security issues. It requires a training process and ultimately profitability based on scale. "At present, New H3C plans to base the private domain big model on past applications, such as the first batch of smart cities such as Hangzhou, Zhengzhou, Lianyungang, Hohhot and other embedded generative big models." It is optimistic that it will be officially commercialized by the end of this year or the first half of next year. ”
In 2023, the 7th anniversary of the establishment of New H3C Group and the 20th anniversary of the birth of the H3C brand. At present, New H3C is in a new stage of development.
In January, according to Unigroup's announcement, the HPE entity would sell its 49% stake in New H3C to Unigroup. After the completion of the transaction, Unigroup International will hold 100% of the equity of New H3C. New H3C, which has restored its domestic identity, can have more room for development and have the opportunity to achieve extended expansion through capital means.
Yu Yingtao said that New H3C plans to accelerate its overseas expansion, and in three to five years, make overseas business become New H3C's "second growth curve" and become a truly international company. At present, New H3C mainly sells network equipment in overseas markets, including some PC and server products, and its revenue has maintained steady growth every year, covering 17 countries.
In the future, facing various uncertainties, in the solution field, New H3C needs to empower hundreds of industries through AI, and cope with changes in interaction, formation, data, computing power, connection, perception, etc. Yu Yingtao said that he will remain positive and optimistic. In his view, the capabilities and confidence of New H3C are "accumulated by hundreds of millions of lines of code", which can help small and medium-sized enterprises achieve digital transformation by continuously upgrading their ICT infrastructure. He hoped that New H3C would adhere to the brand concept of "intensive cultivation and pragmatism and wisdom to the times," be down-to-earth, and avoid empty talk. Provide value to customers with technology, concepts and solutions, and meet the real arrival of the era of artificial intelligence with enterprises and all walks of life.