Written by丨倪雨晴
Editor丨Zhang Weixian
Figure source丨Figure worm
In the digital era, data has become an important intangible asset, and data protection has become a core issue. In the data protection industry, data backup is one of the key links.
However, as a big data country, China's construction of data backup is not high. At a press conference, Zhou Yuefeng, Vice President of Huawei and President of the Data Storage Product Line, pointed out at a press conference that China's current awareness of data backup is weak, the core technology of backup architecture and backup software is backward, and the proportion of data backup in key industries is low, and there are great hidden dangers in national and industry data security.
For example, in the United States and Europe, about 60% of the data is backed up, but only about 22% is backed up in China, of which only 15% is backed up in finance, a key industry. In the event of a natural disaster or man-made damage, assets will be lost, and the economy, life and work will be affected.
In addition, as new applications such as AIGC generate massive amounts of unstructured data, higher requirements are also put forward for data protection. To this end, Huawei has launched a data backup strategy, released a new flagship all-flash backup appliance product, and announced the open-source backup software to meet the new requirements for data backup efficiency and data security in scenarios such as smart finance and autonomous driving.
One of the things that has attracted a lot of attention is the open-source backup software. Zhou Yuefeng said that data backup software has become the technical ecology of the data storage industry, and independent data backup software products in the Chinese market have been developed for more than ten years, but they have not been able to be applied to many key industries. It is understood that Huawei will give priority to choosing storage vendors for cooperation rather than backup software vendors, with the aim of sharing technology and building a backup storage ecosystem.
The backup software market is changing
Talking about the open source of backup software, Zhou Yuefeng said in an interview with the 21st Century Business Herald and other media that the open source team has made long-term preparations for nearly two years, not only to develop key technologies and products of backup software, but also to get commercial-level tests and applications in key customer scenarios at home and abroad. Huawei will complete the open code work in the first half of next year, and now it is mainly for the Chinese market.
In fact, there are independent backup software manufacturers in China, but the scale is not large, and there are multiple considerations behind Huawei's choice of open source path.
First of all, from the perspective of industrial technology development, "we realize that there is a lack of independent and controllable backup software technology in China, resulting in a wide range of applications, which has seriously affected the status quo of data protection in China," Zhou Yuefeng analyzed, "In order to allow China to quickly move from a data country to a data power, I think there is no need for a subdivision industry such as backup software, we do a good job in technology sharing, so that the software code and storage, the whole machine can be combined." ”
This also means that Huawei open-sourced backup software and defined backup software as a storage technology ecosystem. With the launch of Huawei's new strategy, the architecture of the data backup solution has changed from three layers (applications, backup software, and backup storage) to two layers (applications, data backup appliances).
Li Yongjian, President of Huawei's Data Protection Domain, said: "In the future, whether it is in terms of technology evolution or customer investment needs, the independent backup software industry will eventually die. We see that the stacked architecture of independent backup software plus network and media is not the optimal choice, because this architecture is not as good as the performance and cost brought by the endogenous backup capability of backup storage, which does not meet Huawei's current definition of the future of product technology. ”
For open source, he further said that if it is not open source, it will not help customers choose an optimal architecture, and harm China's data protection industry, "Let the industry have a better product choice with limited investment to accelerate the development of the data protection industry, which is our original intention to do this." ”
As you can see, in the current data storage industry, backup software is a short board, and Huawei's open-source open-source software will provide a unified and open backup software experience. "We hope that the barrel will become bigger and bigger, and the water will be filled more and more, rather than making a certain short board an obstacle to the development of the digital economy, and we should make the closed backup software industry in the past become an open technology ecosystem. Zhou Yuefeng said.
The second choice of computing power ecology
From a policy perspective, the "Data Element ×" Three-Year Action Plan (2024-2026) is soliciting opinions and will be released soon, which shows that the country attaches great importance to the data industry.
Zhou Yuefeng said that data will become an asset will give rise to a large industry, "In this big industry, we must also be able to build our own ecology and independent and controllable standards." The development of backup software in the past 10 years has been too slow, and the backup software used in core industries such as the financial industry is not domestic, and it is no longer suitable for the development of the current digital economy industry. ”
He believes that a new approach should be used, and the data backup software industry must be an open technology ecology, combining this technology ecology with China's current booming data storage industry, and moving forward quickly in a new way.
In 2023, Huawei proposes to build a solid computing power foundation in China and build a second choice for the world. This second choice, the second plane, not only refers to the computing power chip level, but also includes the storage capacity. As a part of the storage industry, backup software is also an organic part of the overall computing power ecosystem.
Zhou Yuefeng pointed out that China is currently changing, that is, the uniqueness of the IT standard system dominated by Europe and the United States in the past is being broken, "We are not opposed to such a standard system, and we are still using this standard system today, but the uniqueness is not necessary." Huawei is becoming more and more open in the process of doing IT, and a large number of software is being open-sourced. Our open-source backup software does not hope to gain some profits and revenue by leveraging Huawei's market expansion position in the field of backup software, but rather hopes to strengthen China's data industry. ”
However, there are many challenges in developing the data protection industry. Zhou Yuefeng told reporters: "The protection of data costs money, and today more enterprises regard data protection, especially data backup, as a cost, rather than as a productive force, and this concept has not changed, which is the biggest challenge at present." The second is the technical challenge, so the backup software technology and open source are also to reduce some of the pressure for the enterprise. ”
"In the past six months, we have open-sourced the CANTIAN engine for the storage industry, hoping that at least the distributed database combined with storage can replace the Oracle database," said Zhou. In order to build the second plane, we are very welcome to welcome the second strong storage manufacturer in China, and the third strongest storage manufacturer to be able to produce it. In the process of transforming China from a data power to a data power, Huawei alone will not be able to rely on Huawei. ”
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