Reporter: Fan Qianqian Editor: Zhang Haini
For a long time, the "lack of core and less soul" has been known as the pain point that hinders the development of China's electronic information industry, in which the core refers to the chip, and the soul refers to the operating system. The "blood" that connects the "organs" in the computer ecosystem, such as chips and operating systems, is the software development platform, which plays a key role in connecting the basic layer and the application layer.
Chengdu Zhongke Hexun Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hexun Technology) is such a company committed to the development of domestic software development platform, which is the current mainstream application development framework - Qt, which is a cross-platform C++ graphical user interface application development framework developed by Qt Company, the company's products for the core function of the replacement rate has been able to reach 70%.
In the view of Zhu Jinping, chairman of the company, the development of the information and innovation industry needs policy guidance, but at the same time, the company also needs to continuously improve product performance and make a really easy-to-use product. To this end, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the company has also established a future development strategy, that is, to become a leader in China's software development tools, to provide an independent, controllable, safe and credible software development platform for the healthy development of China's industrial digitalization.
In October this year, the 2023 (4th) Future Conference with the theme of "Technology Unbounded - Intelligence, Green and Integration" was held in Chengdu, hosted by the Sichuan Chamber of Commerce and the Sichuan Business Enterprise Development Strategy Research Institute, co-sponsored by Bank of Shanghai Chengdu Branch, Guojin Securities, Boyuan Capital, Deloitte China, and Tahota Law Firm, with National Business Daily as the co-organizer media. The conference released the "2023 Future Star - Top 20 Most Valuable Investment Enterprises of Sichuan Businessmen", and released the two major awards of Future Star for the first time - the Entrepreneurial Emerging Award and the Growth Potential Award. Hexun Technology is the 2023 Future Star TOP20 listed enterprises. The blockbuster release of the "2023 Future Star" series list will undoubtedly help draw the map of Sichuan's science and technology innovation forces.
The localization of the underlying technology has a long road, and it is not easy for Hexun Technology to go forward, with a small market space, a shortage of C++ talents, and a "burning money" in the industrial ecology, which are all problems in front of the company, which need to be overcome step by step.
Image source: Courtesy of the company
Why do you need to develop your own software development platform?
In the words of Chairman Zhu Jinping, in the past ten years, the company has moved from a project system to a product system, that is, from imitation to substitution.
In fact, it is not easy to build a self-developed software development platform that replaces mainstream products. The new platform not only implements the previous core functionality, but also has to be compatible with tens of thousands of software.
"I remember when I rewrote it at the time, everyone (was) thinking it was difficult, can you do it?" said Mr. Zhu, and fortunately, it was finally done.
So why did it do it, and why did it happen? Zhu Jinping's confidence stems from his confidence in the R&D team. It is reported that the company's R&D team has absorbed the core backbone of Qt China (Chengdu) R&D Center and Motorola (Chengdu) R&D Center, "these two resources cannot be copied."
As for why it should be done, it is based on the research and judgment of market demand, and it is an inevitable choice to follow the trend in the context of the times. On the one hand, Qt is a development tool that has a high penetration rate in some industries, and on the other hand, there is a demand for localization of software development platforms.
Zhu mentioned that after Qt entered the Chinese market in 2010, it was popularized in China in 6 years, and the reason behind it is its strong cross-platform ability, that is, it can be compatible with multiple operating system platforms such as Windows and Linux.
"Manufacturing companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Siemens, and Bosch, as well as aerospace companies such as NASA and Boeing, are using Qt for software development. Zhu Jinping said.
With high market penetration, problems also arise. First of all, as a software development tool developed by foreign companies, Qt still has shortcomings, including incompatibility with domestic chips, operating systems, etc., and customer demand is forcing the trend of localization;
"In the past, everyone thought that open source meant autonomy and control, because the code was public, but then gradually found that heavy reliance on open source did not mean that it was autonomous and controllable, and there were still hidden dangers in information security and industrial development. Zhu Jincheng said.
Policy dividends are an important driver of localization
In fact, the autonomy and controllability of underlying technologies, including software development tools, has also attracted more and more attention at the national level in recent years. Since 2018, the state has elevated information innovation to the strategic level and proposed a "2+8+N" application system. Since the beginning of this year, as the importance of national information security has been continuously improved, the information and innovation sector in the secondary market has also become a new outlet sought after by capital.
The rapid development of Hexun Technology is also inseparable from policy support.
In Zhu Jinqi's view, in the process of promoting Xinchuang products, it is inevitable to face the problem of market use Xi, and policy guidance can gradually promote the change of this user Xi habit, but "I think our goal is not to eat the dividends of Xinchuang only in China, but to really make a useful thing to be able to compete with others."
To this end, standing at the node of the 10th anniversary and facing the future, Hexun Technology also needs to think about the next development strategy. Zhu Jinping said that in the future, the company will go beyond and enter the stage of platform development, with the vision of becoming a leader in China's software development tools and providing an independent, controllable, safe and credible software development platform for the healthy development of China's industrial digitalization.
Focusing on digitalization is actually focusing on the future. Zhu Jinping said that in the past, informatization relied more on hardware, while digitalization relied more on software, and the importance of software development tools has become prominent under the current wave of global digital transformation.
In order to adapt to the future development trend of the industry, and to further improve the convenience and usability of products, the platform is also developing some new functions. "For example, low-code frameworks, data modeling frameworks, cloud collaborative development, etc., these are core features that have never been seen before, and we are working on them because they represent the future. ”
In addition, the improvement of product performance is actually to further expand the market, at present, the company's products are mainly for the military field, in order to penetrate more industrial fields faster, empowering industrial digitalization, it is also necessary to improve product performance.
Image source: Courtesy of the company
R&D talents are scarce, and there is a long way to go to build an industrial ecosystem
The localization of the underlying technology has a long way, and the long march has taken a key step, but there is still a long way to go to the top, which needs to be further promoted by policies, capital and time, and professional R&D personnel.
Compared with Java, another software development tool, Hexun Zhiling is based on C++ language, and the shortage of domestic C++ talents has caused the company's product development to encounter great difficulties. Li Mu, vice president of R&D of the company, mentioned at the release ceremony of Hexun Zhiling V5.0 a few days ago, "In recent years, we have a very big pain point in the process of developing Hexun Zhiling, that is, there are really too few talents in C++. To this end, Li Mu also called on universities to cooperate to build a talent ecology.
In addition to the talent ecology, the high-quality development of the information and innovation industry is inseparable from the mutual promotion of the industrial ecology, which is the consensus of every enterprise in the information and innovation industry. Software development tools need to be adapted to chips, operating systems, etc., otherwise they will lose their value.
Li Mu mentioned that the future development of the company is inseparable from the cooperation of production, education and research, and the company will invest more energy to adapt to the three major basic software including domestic operating systems, databases, and middleware, and constantly update the company's products with the change of its version.
Lu Yijiang of Hexun Technology told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that in addition to building an ecosystem with basic software, the company is also building an ecosystem with large IT manufacturers such as Huawei, as well as RISC-V chip architecture. "The RISC-V architecture is recognized in the industry as a good opportunity for China to overtake in the future corners, but there is no suitable development tool in this area. However, Lu Yijiang bluntly said that exploring ecological co-construction is the only way, but at the same time, it faces the problem of "burning money".
"The long cycle of generating market benefits makes the investment greater than the scale of operation, which is a difficult point for us to balance. If you want to make a profit, you may not do a lot of money-burning work, so you can fight for a scale first. But [at] when everyone is trying to catch up with the ecology, we are afraid of falling behind if we don't invest. In addition, Lu Yijiang also mentioned to reporters that compared with chips, operating systems, etc., the market size of software development tools is small, resulting in its lack of attention in the industry in terms of policy and ecology. However, he also emphasized that software development tools that connect basic software and basic applications actually play an important role in the information and innovation industry.
National Business Daily