Intense external changes often result in a group of companies that bravely rise to the top and follow the trend.
Challenges and opportunities always go hand in hand.
The epidemic has had an impact on many industries, but with the increasing demand for home office, remote meetings, and online courses, the cloud service industry has also ushered in an important period of opportunity. This year, China’s cloud service market broke out against the trend and achieved strong growth. According to Canalys data, in the second quarter of 2020, China’s cloud infrastructure service expenditure reached a record 4.3 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 70% year-on-year. Driven by remote office, teaching demand, and government stimulus measures, China’s cloud infrastructure services Continue to maintain the world’s second position, service expenditure accounted for 12.4% of the world.
Intense external changes often result in a group of companies that bravely rise to the top and follow the trend. In May 2020, Kingsoft Cloud, a well-known independent cloud service provider, was listed on NASDAQ in the United States. Founded in 2012, Kingsoft Cloud has gradually built a complete cloud computing infrastructure and operating system in a few years, and through organic integration with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of Things, blockchain, edge computing, AR/VR, etc., Deeply cultivating the industry, providing more than 120 solutions suitable for public services, finance, medical, education, media, industry, video, games, e-commerce retail, real estate and other industries.
Jinshan Cloud’s vision does not stop at the domestic market. With more mature technology, Kingsoft Cloud is also actively seeking overseas opportunities. At present, Kingsoft Cloud has set up green and energy-saving data centers and operating agencies in many cities in China and Singapore. And Southeast Asia is also the market that Kingsoft Cloud focuses on.
In order to pass Kingsoft Cloud’s ideas and strategic ideas to more entrepreneurial partners, the Singapore x Asia Innovation Cooperation Forum 2020 will be held on October 21st Deep Technology, 36Kr Global was fortunate to have Mr. He Haijian, CFO of Kingsoft Cloud, and Mr. Kuok Meng Xiong, the founding managing partner of K3 Ventures in Singapore, to express their opinions and share their views on the cooperation between Chinese and Southeast Asian companies. , Thinking and insights on the impact of the epidemic on enterprises, and technology-enabled enterprises.
Judgment on the market
Moderator: Kingsoft Cloud’s business has successfully entered the global market including Southeast Asia. From the perspective of your professionals, which areas have maturely applied cloud technology? Which industries do you think have great potential for applying these technologies in the future?
He Haijian: We have been paying attention to the Southeast Asian market. Kingsoft Cloud is very interested in the close connection between Chinese companies and the Southeast Asian market. Specifically, streaming media, e-commerce, games, and cross-border trade in Southeast AsiaE-Enterprise industry and Chinese companies Closely related. As a cloud service provider, we are also thinking about how to provide more support for Chinese companies in Southeast Asia and local companies in Southeast Asia from the level of cloud service infrastructure construction.
For example, in the field of cross-border e-commerce, some emerging platforms often hope to use independent third-party cloud service systems to build platforms and store various types of data. This is the development of Kingsoft Cloud. Provides important opportunities. Another example is that in Southeast Asia, the development of the game industry is in the ascendant. The industry itself values the content and timing of release. Cloud service companies can help game companies to store or release information at the same time around the world, allowing users from all over the world to be at the same time. Time to reap the same experience. There are similar cases in the field of cross-border trade. We moved the internal systems and data of different regions to the cloud and realized connections, helping different countries and regions to establish efficient business linkages.
Of course, there are some differences between the Southeast Asian and Chinese markets. Various types of live broadcasts in China are currently very popular with users. Among the data disseminated on the cloud, 60-70% are related to live broadcasts. But in Southeast Asia, most of the content spread on the cloud is still to B, which is business-related. But I think thisThe difference is not absolute. Because the data dissemination of live content is very similar to the data dissemination of online courses, in the future, if Southeast Asian companies or institutions have large-scale online education data dissemination needs, they can fully utilize China’s experience in live data dissemination.
At the IaaS layer, Kingsoft Cloud integrates edge computing platforms, computing storage platforms, content distribution acceleration platforms, and data processing centers. At the PaaS layer, Kingsoft Cloud focuses on ultra-high-definition experience and releases 8K+VR end-to-end overall solutions; in terms of artificial intelligence, based on AI, through content understanding, picture recognition, perceptual coding and other technologies, it can achieve more efficient bandwidth Higher image quality transmission. Our cloud services are ready to help the rapid development of the Southeast Asian market.
Moderator: Mr. Kuok, from the perspective of investors, what progress has been made in Southeast Asia’s digitalization? Given that the Kuok Group’s businesses behind K3 Ventures are very diversified, what areas do you think Kuok Group can further achieve digitalization?
Kuok Meng Xiong: K3 Ventures also witnessed the power of advanced technology during the investment process. For example, a company we invested in Local agricultural technology companies are using drones for image capture, and then Use image recognition, big data analysis and other technologies to determine whether the crop is infected or threatened by pests. The dissemination of various types of data in this process is inseparable from cloud services. In addition, in the hotel industry where the group has been operating for many years, the cloud is also playing a role. At present, our hotel’s internal management has been fully implemented on the cloud, and travelers’ reservation service information is also stored in the cloud. Through the cloud, we can better serve hotel customers.
The impact of the epidemic on the industry
Moderator: What impact do you think the new crown epidemic will have on companies?
He Haijian: The new crown epidemic has brought many new positive changes to the cloud service industry. Take online classrooms as an example, children cannot be normal during the epidemicTo go back to school, you need to acquire knowledge through online classrooms. The “class” here not only refers to traditional school teaching, but also extracurricular teaching, such as practicing oral English with foreign teachers. This actually puts forward higher requirements for the cloud service industry. Without stable data transmission, cross-border and real-time oral communication cannot be achieved. Moreover, the current online courses have higher requirements for cloud storage and data processing capabilities. In the early years, online classes were taught in small classes. A teacher only faced a few students, and students could only receive audio and video from the teacher in one direction. Now, a teacher has to face nearly a hundred students who are listening to the class at the same time, and the class is interactive in real time, so the efficiency of encoding and decoding in data transmission must be improved. These changes are positive. We see that the government and enterprises are willing to increase R&D investment in this field. Kingsoft Cloud takes the lead in the industry to support the function of selecting the best according to the flow dimension and multiple return source links, and it can still guarantee the normal transmission of video in a weak network environment with 30% packet loss. The rapid development of 5G technology will also promote the development of cloud services. After the popularization of 5G technology, the new generation of smart hardware, such as smart glasses, VR/AR equipment, etc. will also have more usage scenarios, and the form of video content will become more Diversified, the entire traffic trend will continue to tilt towards video. Relying on the existing first-mover advantage, Kingsoft Cloud has stocked complete technologies and solutions in the field of video cloud, and will continue to work hard in this field. I personally believe that in the next ten years, these new technologies will complement each other and will also promote the continued development of the cloud service industry.
Kuok Meng Xiong: I think the epidemic will accelerate the technologicalization of enterprises. Some of the technologies used in the epidemic process will be retained and optimized by enterprises in the future and become normalized tools for service enterprises. In this regard, I think we still have room for improvement. The shipping companies under the Kuok Group have more than 5,000 seafarers around the world, but so far, they have not been able to establish a trajectory tracking system for seafarers for epidemic prevention and control. In the future, through new technologies, the group can establish a database of seafarers’ personal information, not only to track personal trajectories during the epidemic period, but also to aggregate information such as the crew’s work performance as a reference for future employee career development.
How technology empowers enterprises
Moderator: Mr. He, how do you think technology can help companies empower and solve business problems?
He Haijian: Companies all over the world are now reforming in the direction of “Internet +”, working hard to transform their office methods and realize online. At present, we have observed several key points. First, all work content will now be stored in the cloud server, which means that employees no longer need to download various work software frequently; moreover, through the cloud system, enterprises can better realize data Safe management and control. And, the cloud can help upstream and downstreamFor enterprises to realize information exchange, we recommend that enterprises and their customers and suppliers can choose the cloud service of the same third-party company, so that suppliers, customers and our enterprise will use the same data center, and several parties can achieve more efficient data shared.
