At a time when the outside world is ridiculing that the car has become a computer with four wheels, the value sequence of the automotive industry chain has changed.
On October 27, at the HUAWEI CLOUD TechWave Global Technology Summit (Application Modernization), Zhang Yuxin, CTO of HUAWEI CLOUD, told reporters, including First Finance, that cloud native is entering the core IT system of many industries, including automobiles and electric power.
"For example, Guangben Automobile has introduced HUAWEI CLOUD's distributed cloud original concept, and has successively completed the containerization transformation of dozens of business systems such as the Internet of Vehicles, new energy vehicle monitoring, store services, after-sales management, and membership systems." Zhang Yuxin said.
Cloud native is considered the future of cloud computing, and key cloud-native technologies such as containers, microservices, and serverless have been gradually used in enterprise production environments. When the design and manufacture of automotive machinery shifts to the development of software and hardware for smart devices, the full cloud nativeization of the automotive production and marketing chain has become the consensus of the industry.
The value sequence of the automotive industry chain is changing
The manufacturing model that traditional cars once boasted of is becoming the biggest "burden" under their digital transformation.
In the past, from design to mass production, a traditional car had to go through at least key links such as design, engineering, packaging, testing, release, and production, and each link had many lists interlocked. For example, there will be virtual testing and construction, crash testing, dynamic testing, road testing, noise testing and other subdivisions in the test. Calculated, it takes at least 3 years for a traditional car to go from design to off-line, while high-end brands such as Ferrari and Bentley have a cycle of 5 to 10 years from design to mass production.
However, when traditional cars gradually move towards intelligent and connected vehicles, the development cycle is greatly shortened, which means that the operation mode, research and development mode, manufacturing model and supply chain model of car companies have begun to encounter the challenge of digital reconstruction.
"For example, Guangben Automobile has R&D and design of automobiles, as well as manufacturing, as well as 4S stores and customer service systems, but these systems are 'chimney-style' and fragmented." Zhang Yuxin told reporters that the application model under the traditional architecture can no longer meet the future needs.
The technical person in charge of a domestic car company once told reporters that in the automotive system, the scheduling system cannot be improved according to the market, which means that it can only be produced based on inventory, which cannot adapt to the current customized needs of "thousands of people". "In the past few years, auto e-commerce has only extended the sales and marketing links from offline to online, and has not really realized the opening of the entire chain data."
In the research and development link, any engineering change will involve upstream suppliers, research and development, manufacturing, market multi-party linkage, engineering change link is crucial, if any link can not be changed in time to adjust, will form a sluggish material, resulting in the company's cost growth.
In Zhang Yuxin's view, when using cloud native technology, the whole process from research and development, production, manufacturing, supply, sales, and customer service can be formed into a complete program, and the entire solution is cloudified to form a complete set of collaborative systems for the IT system. "Even if the volume of business increases in the future, the management cost will still be lower than the traditional solution, which is why the automotive industry embraces the cloud-native concept."
"The reason why we proposed that cloud native should shift from resource-centric to application-centric is because we see the direction and difficulties of digital transformation of government and enterprises. In the early days of the cloud, everyone felt that the virtual machine on the cloud was finished, but the things on the virtual machine from the database, middleware, applications or traditional architecture did not change our application mode, nor did it change the data island problem. Zhang Yuxin told reporters that more dividends (enterprises) of cloud technology have not been enjoyed.
Cloud native has entered a golden period of development
The digital challenges facing the automotive industry are just one microcosm of many industries. As the cloud computing industry becomes the foundation and hub of digital transformation, cloud services in the field of government and enterprises will stimulate greater demand and market space.
On October 28, in a report released by IDC, it was mentioned that the overall market size of China's public cloud services (IaaS/PaaS/SaaS) reached US$12.31 billion in the first half of 2021, of which the IaaS market increased by 47.5% year-on-year and the PaaS market increased by 53.9% year-on-year. From the perspective of the IaaS+PaaS market, the first half of 2021 increased by 48.6% year-on-year, down from the second half of 2020 (53%), but still maintained the highest growth rate in the world.
From the perspective of technology trends, IDC believes that cloud native has entered a golden period of development. "From the perspective of users, users in traditional industries have gradually transformed peripheral systems, sub-core business systems, and core business systems to varying degrees. From the perspective of manufacturers, cloud vendors have released their own cloud native strategies, from products, partners, standard formulation, talent cultivation and other aspects to seize the opportunity. ”
Zhang Yuxin told reporters that driven by industrial value, HUAWEI CLOUD proposed cloud native 2.0, of which the new cloud native paradigm includes ten aspects of "ubiquitous, computing, scheduling, networking, interconnection of everything, application, data, intelligence, security, and industry enablement", encouraging enterprise clouding from "ON CLOUD" to "IN CLOUD", from resource-centric to application-centric, so that business is born in the cloud and grows up in the cloud.
"HUAWEI CLOUD believes that the significance of cloud native for digital transformation is not only a technological change, but also a series of changes in architecture solutions, production methods, thinking modes, and business models." Zhang Yuxin said.
Judging from the competition in the public cloud service market, the competition of head manufacturers is glued, and Alibaba Cloud, HUAWEI CLOUD, and Tencent Cloud all firmly occupy the top three positions, jointly occupying 60% of the market share.
"Cloud vendors are also facing more fierce competition while gaining more market space. How to break out of the game and occupy a place in the crowd of male ring attendants, in addition to testing the manufacturer's own advantages, but also testing the comprehensive service ability. Zhuge Lan, research manager of IDC China public cloud services, said that a cloud platform with comprehensive service capabilities can occupy the commanding heights in the fierce competition in the future.