The SaaS Ecology “Thousands of Sails” was released at the Chengdu Summit of the Global Digital Ecology Conference, which revealed its first play in the SaaS field. The plan includes “three projects at one end of the cloud”: “One Cloud” means that Tencent Cloud will provide infrastructure and underlying technical support for SaaS enterprises; “One End” represents Enterprise WeChat provides C2B connectivity for SaaS enterprises. The three major projects include the SaaS Accelerator, the SaaS Technology Alliance and the SaaS selection, providing vendors with sales, technology, capital and training services.
At the other end, Alibaba has repeatedly mentioned the SaaS strategy in the advancement of its cloud business.
In March of this year, Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, stressed the announcement of the Alibaba Cloud business boundary: “Alibaba Cloud will not do SaaS itself, and it will be done by partners.”
Whether cloud service vendors should set a clear line in the SaaS space? Tencent Cloud, vice president of Tencent Cloud, who is responsible for Tencent Cloud SaaS, believes that Tencent Cloud should have its own style of play.
“This is not a problem that can be solved by shouting slogans.” “Tencent will do its own SaaS in the field (such as office collaboration), but it does not mean that we are not really working with other SaaS vendors. This is Tencent’s attitude.”
What to do, not to do, the giant has to have a border
On the surface, the difference between Tencent and Ali’s treatment of ecology is “do not do SaaS”. In fact, behind the differences between the two faces, the two giants have different cooperation strategies for ecological partners.
Ali takes “retreat” as a step forward, paying attention to completely demarcating the boundaries in business development, and leaving the SaaS market to partners, and clarifying the attitude: “Put the meat out a little to have meat to eat together” In order to attract more SaaS vendors from all walks of life in their own ecology.
Tencent is mainly based on “combination” and advocates doing its own in the fields of instant messaging, audio and video connectivity, data protection, etc., and at the same time, it shows the open attitude to the industry: “The meat for the partner is not one point.” Will be bad.”
We can compare a good SaaS ecology to a football game. Someone is responsible for playing the ball at the next game. Someone is responsible for the whistle on the sidelines. Someone is responsible for making the rules. Only when they perform their duties, the game can proceed smoothly. Once the roles overlap, the results of the game will be difficult to be fair.
The same is true of the SaaS ecosystem.
Small SaaS vendors are looking at the resounding name of giant companies, which is critical in taking customers; the giants need SaaS vendors’ awareness and service capabilities in the industry to avoid complex industry solutions. Lose the rhythm.
Can be thin for all potentialsFor SaaS vendors, the worries of working with the giants are always: What if the giants also do my business?
The road that was established in 2004 has had such a thrilling moment. Previously, Daoyi Cloud developed a separate enterprise-level IM product, but in 2014, WeChat decided to launch the enterprise number (the predecessor of Enterprise WeChat), which is almost identical to Daoyi’s products.
“The back is cool.” Tao Yiyun CEO Chen Zhen recalled the situation at the time. Fortunately, Daoyi, who was with Guangzhou WeChat team, quickly obtained the qualification to become a corporate partner. After careful consideration, Chen Detective cut off the independent application of Daoyiyun at that time and completely became an application developer on the enterprise WeChat platform.
Chen’s move is equivalent to entrusting the “half life” of Daoyiyun to Tencent. When talking about the original intention of making a decision, Chen Zhen told 36: “Tencent is playing the operating system, we are doing the upper-level application. It seems that there will be no Huawei and Xiaomi without Android. Everyone’s positioning and division of labor are different.”
At present, Daoyiyun is one of the largest service providers on the WeChat platform, launching a series of SaaS applications for OA, CRM and HR, and has released IT Internet, industry, retail and other industries. The solution is 700,000 registered companies. In the semi-annual report released in August this year, Daoyiyun’s revenue was 62.55 million yuan, up 28.8% year-on-year.
From the competition of the giants to becoming a part of the giant ecology, Chen Zhen naturally understands how important the rules are to the ecology. When asked if Tencent had the suspicion of being a “referee” and a “player”, Chen said honestly: “This is indeed more cautious.”
Tencent has a number of established SaaS products, such as the research and development management platform TAPD, and the knowledge base product “Leixiang”, which makes SaaS vendors who have received cooperation with the olive branch feel uneasy. Chen Zhen also said to 36 :: “Tencent can do anything, but to make the boundaries clear, there are boundaries, and there is cooperation.”
Doing and not doing, what is the boundary of Tencent for SaaS? In the view of Vice President of Tencent Cloud, there are two criteria for measuring the proposition.
“The first principle is that the experience of this track is the best, this must be the highest priority (principle), because we have to meet the needs of customers; the second principle is When we don’t have enough Know-How in a certain field, we will definitely work with other partners.” Answer.
Maybe the answer provided by the answer is not to convince all the partners, but I have to admit that in front of the giantsThe chips that SaaS vendors can play are really limited.
In September, after Alibaba Cloud proposed “not to do SaaS” for half a year, Zhang Jianfeng revised this view again when he was interviewed by the media such as 36. He said: “Sometimes Ali needs to help each other to use all products. Our methodology is rewritten. So we can’t say that we don’t do SaaS at all.”
How did SaaS become the scent of the giant?
Consumer (C-side) single-piece clothing under e-commerce, and the enterprise (B-side) purchases a CRM system from a software vendor, which has a longer chain transaction bar, from pre-sales and customers. In the mid-term implementation, delivery, and later services, each link affects the willingness and price of the customer to pay.
This is also the pit where Ali, Tencent and other giants have to step on the To B market. If you want to take a detour, finding the forerunner of this industry is naturally the best way.
“I can’t make it myself. We need some Kind-How to add it. For example, doing energy and doing logistics, there are a lot of things related to warehousing and warehouse allocation, and we need to combine these capabilities with the industry.” Said to 36 氪.
Tencent’s past 20 years of experience has mostly focused on social games such as social networking and games. When customers become traditional enterprises, SaaS vendors in vertical industries have played a leading role in the industry to some extent.
Wang Zhiyong is now a partner of Tencent’s retail jewellery industry. His role division with Tencent is: Wang Zhiyong won customers such as Chow Tai Fook and Lao Feng Xiang in the first place. Tencent assisted in planning appropriate products and solutions, and both parties will visit customers together. Among them, Wang Zhiyong got the support of the platform, and Tencent opened a new industry.
The Chen investigation team is also playing the same role. After winning the project order of COFCO, Chen Zhen built a set of applications for COFCO customer managers, suppliers to coordinate purchase and payment process based on Enterprise WeChat. In the middle, Tencent Cloud integrates from IaaS and PaaS to various WeChat products.
It can be seen that Tencent provides basic platforms and resources such as cloud and enterprise WeChat in the ecosystem built by Tencent and SaaS vendors. SaaS vendors are playing customers on the front line and accumulating industry awareness to help Tencent complete the acquisition. The dirty work of passengers, delivery and other links.
“You can do it alone on the C side, but the B end must be with everyone to fight the group.”
In order to strengthen the relationship with SaaS vendors, investment is naturally one of the best means.
Zhuang Wenlei calls this relationship a “sense of trust”. He believes that through targeted and strategic capital layout, it can not only promote the ecological activity of Tencent’s entire B-end, but also promote the ecological enterprise to Tencent.The sense of trust.
In April last year, Tencent had successively invested in Changli Technology, Donghua Software, and Changshan Beiming listed companies, which was not unrelated to the implementation of Tencent Cloud. Since all three companies are mainly engaged in software development, whether it is the cognition of industry solutions or the control of channels and sales, Tencent needs to make up the sector.
In Zhuang Wenlei’s view, before Tencent became a shareholder of Changliang, Donghua and Beiming, the cooperation between the two parties was more “project system”, and after the shareholding, the cooperation became more systematic. “For example, Tencent and Donghua have a post-investment consultation meeting every quarter, and they will deeply connect with the business opportunities in the country.”Zhuang Wenlei said.
With the advancement of the giant cloud computing strategy, the SaaS model, which relies on the cloud platform by nature, is the trend of the times. Looking overseas, the United States has unicorns such as Slack and Zoom. In China, the giants are interested in the game, and the capital is cold and hot. SaaS manufacturers will also face a longer development cycle. This is the inevitable result of SaaS and also the To B. inevitable.
(I am 36 氪 senior author Su Jianxun, concerned about cloud computing, AI, intelligent hardware, if you are also interested in the giant cloud battle cloud computing, welcome to communicate with me, my WeChat is jason907, add please note company, position, Name.)