Cloud services: Gaofu game? Does a small company have a chance?

The intermediary transaction SEO diagnoses Taobao guest stationmaster buys the Cloud host technology Hall

In China, startups do cloud services like a bunch of "death squads". What do they challenge giants?

Article | Liu

April 2013, Aliyun official micro-blog launched the "I and Aliyun story" theme activities have been "unexpected" effect, the original micro-blog promotional activities in the developer's "saliva" in the dim exit.

Play Crab Technology CEO Yeke (has developed "big Masters" and other game products) is not taboo, will be directed at Aliyun. Microblogging on the less active he finally angry: "We have used in the Ali cloud more than 20 virtual hosts, half a year, there have been 1 times all the machines all power off, 2 times more than one hard drive suddenly read, 3 hard disk I/O suddenly full (explanation is the same physical machine on the other virtual machines and we rob Resources), 1 times Customer service does not inform the direct restart, 10 times above operation Dimension does not respond. The phone has never been passed within 5 minutes and is ready to move out of all the machines. Goodbye Aliyun. "Yeke and Aliyun style" farewell "attracted more than 1100 forwarding, nearly 300 reviews. Yeke also pointed out that this cloud services should be returned to the laboratory, and other products and services are sound and then come out of commercialization.

Aliyun customer service to apologize: "Small cloud very cherish every customer, hope to help customers solve problems, in the process of the previous treatment to bring you trouble, Yun here to apologize to you, we sincerely hope that the use of Aliyun customers are at ease." "Yeke very disdain, give" Don't pull "" You go away point "and so on reply.

One developer responded to Yeke: "I've encountered all of these problems, and at first there was a loss of local disk data at the time when Aliyun still supported local disks." Aliyun on such a failure never issued a bulletin, even if you put the fault report to it, it will first let you find their own reasons, it is not justified to solve, the solution is nothing but the host, but I have already migrated out, Aliyun do not know when to rely on the point. ”

Blog Park official microblogging in the thread in response to Yeke encountered problems: "1 times all machines all power off (we are experiencing network storage failure, the effect is almost the same as all power outages), 2 times more than one hard drive suddenly read (not encountered), 3 times hard disk IO suddenly full (encountered many times, this is already recognized as a problem), 1 times Customer service does not notify direct restart (encountered 1 times, because of physical machine failure), more than 10 operational dimensions do not respond (never encountered), the phone has never been in 5 minutes through (never encountered). ”

Come to watch "I and Aliyun Story" The topic also has Tencent Cloud, Ucloud, also pats cloud, blue Flood cloud, seven Neu Yun and so on cloud service provider.

The anger of the developers is a real reflection of the immaturity of China's cloud services. Despite all kinds of verbal abuse, Aliyun currently has the highest share of the public cloud market in China. In fact, more than Aliyun, even the Amazon AWS trusted by the developers is hard to escape the downtime. To be sure, China's cloud services are just in the midst of a toddler, with a certain distance from AWS (Amazon Web Service).

The domestic IaaS service has been accepted by more and more developers as the fastest growing area of public cloud services and is a rigid requirement in various cloud services. The global IaaS (Infrastructure-services) public cloud services and cloud storage are the fastest-growing public cloud services category, with a growth rate of 42.4% per cent in 2012, up to $6.1 billion trillion in market size, according to Gartner, a market research institute. This article will also focus on providing IAAS services to this entrepreneurial community.

In China, Tencent, Baidu, Beijing-east, Ali and other large companies to do cloud services like the company's strategic environment, "infrastructure", do not catch up with the trend, small companies do infrastructure cloud services like "death squads."

Looks like: "Gao Fu Shuai" game?

Mention of cloud computing, have to mention the industry boss brother-Amazon. Amazon officially launched its AWS business from March 2006. Early on, Amazon leased a large amount of idle IT resources prepared for peak business to small and medium-sized businesses. The biggest benefit of renting Amazon IT services is to reduce hardware costs and operational inputs such as computer rooms, and developers can focus on core business. Now, the AWS business occupies an important part of the entire Amazon business. While Amazon's earnings in the second quarter of this year did not disclose the profitability of AWS, Wall Street analysts generally believe that AWS has a higher profit margin than Amazon's main retail business. Amazon founder Bezos has hinted that future AWS operations will earn more revenue than retail sales.

After that, AWS was alone in the United States. There have been many disciples in China, and some enterprises have begun to engage in IaaS services. At present, the domestic IaaS suppliers can be broadly divided into three camps: the first camp is the traditional IDC manufacturers, such as the Western Digital, blue flood, internet and so on; the second camp is Aliyun, Sheng, Tencent Cloud, such as several big internet giants, can be called "Platform class service provider", product line all-inclusive; The third camp, such as Ucloud gifted, Qingcloud Qingyun, seven Neu Yun, and cloud storage, respectively, plowing the infrastructure of a certain area, can be called "vertical class service provider."

First look at the traditional IDC manufacturers. They have a certain stock of customers, have IDC room, bandwidth and other resources. The industry's more well-known "pioneers" in the century interconnection of the Cloud Express Line (Cloudex Inc.), in 2009, they first launched the Cloud Express line business, and become an IaaS platform for the more active manufacturers, but in 2011 announced the dissolution. The most criticized by the industry is its traditional IDC operating mode and relatively rudimentary technology. IDC vendors in terms of scale, scalability and the richness of the provision of components, the future is likely to become a problem. "Fast enough technology CEO Jiang Shuo Miao analysis."

In particular, IDC manufacturers in the local have room and other resources, but the "vassal" situation around them to further develop the room and other infrastructure resources. Their technical strength is deficient, the service ability is weak, the current development situation is general. Engaged in hand-travel development of Hilink company Yun-Wei director Sal introduced, their current old project is still using the blue flood, the network host IDC service, but the new project began to choose Cloud Host.

Look at the second big camp. Similar to Alibaba, Sina, Baidu, Tencent, Shanda and other Internet companies do cloud services. In this piece of infrastructure services, Sheng and Aliyun almost synchronized with IaaS services. They all benefited from the parent company's funds, hardware, operation and other resources support. But after that, Shanda's investment in capital and technology gradually weakened, Aliyun began to occupy a dominant position in the market.

Traditional IDC manufacturers, Aliyun, Tencent Cloud and other cloud providers is the title of the "Golden Key" was born. But similar ucloud, seven Neu Yun, and the cloud and other components of the relative lack of brand awareness, and not rich "family", but their team members called "luxury." For example, Ucloud team from Sheng, Tencent Cloud and other company's technical backbone, the same cloud host business as the starting point of the Qingcloud founder team from Tencent, Baidu, IBM. Then look at the storage area, seven Neu Yun founding team from Jinshan, Grand, and so on, and the cloud from the Zhejiang network, although slightly inferior, but in the field of static storage has been 8 years of technology accumulation.

In fact: Platform Traders encounter natural Short board, small companies occasion advance

The business direction of several major platforms is basically consistent, but the product has certain market orientation. For example, Aliyun, just online soon Tencent Cloud more service game manufacturers, and Sheng now more services video business. "Each company will optimize and adjust the product according to the customer's demand." Stability, speed, security and other key indicators are reflected in the product details. Everyone spelled out the details. "Another cloud storage," says CTO Shen Zhihua.

"Aliyun's mishap is that there is no IDC/ISP license plate, the last resort to buy million nets. Sal said. But in the Aliyun and million network account integration process, there are many problems, two platform data to get through to spend a long time, thus causing a lot of inconvenience to developers.

In addition, similar to Aliyun, Tencent Cloud, as the Internet companies do both content and cloud platform, the main business may compete with users. Because of the existence of some overlord clauses, app developers, electric dealers, games and other field developers have chosen to choose "in a" problem. For example, last August, Jingdong Mall to protect the rights and interests of buyers, strictly prohibit sellers to store data in the competitor's room or host, and specifically can not be put to Aliyun host, Wan host or Tencent Cloud host. Otherwise, once discovered, Jingdong Mall has the right to terminate the cooperation immediately and close the sellers shop. "The implication is in the" threat "developers: In the end is the use of Aliyun or Jingdong cloud? You choose one.

The "Overlord clause" that the entrepreneur spits the trough also includes, the Aliyun stipulates two class domain name to point to own cloud server, the domain name record transfers to own here; each cloud host can put the site only 10. Tencent is required to access Tencent development platform developers, according to the provisions of all game applications must choose Tencent Hosting mode, social tools, e-commerce, etc. need to use the relationship chain application, the proposed choice of Tencent hosting.

In fact, Beijing east worried about sales, hot sales category and other data into the hands of competitors is not unreasonable. This is also Aliyun, Tencent Cloud Platform type IaaS service provider a short board. Even in the business environment overseas, the good faith of the Amazon AWS is difficult to avoid.

Compared with Aliyun, Tencent Cloud, Sheng platform, Ucloud, seven Neu Yun, such as neutral third-party technology providers, to provide more pure technical services, will not involve content, operational aspects of the problem. "Choose a separate cloud platform, developers do not have to worry about, focus on the upper content of the access and user's introduction to work on the line." "Ucloud COO Hua Kun said. It is because of the Aliyun, Sheng and other platforms imperfect, to the component business opportunities.

In fact, each platform has its own technical characteristics and market characteristics, different application scenarios need to choose different cloud service providers. Microsoft, for example, is the start of Windows, and if the development platform uses Windows components heavily and developers are willing to take the cost, then Microsoft Cloud Platform Azure can be chosen. "Tencent Cloud gives me the feeling suitable for doing online games." Because many of its functions include bandwidth settings, high concurrent bandwidth, more connections, more computing, less storage, because it does not provide separate storage, they tend to support web games, mobile games. Therefore, Tencent Cloud was the first batch of partners to announce the game developers are not surprising. Jiang Shuo Miao said.

And Ucloud team has Tencent's genes, as a vertical platform, it in-depth game, electricity and other industries, choose to serve a small number of customers first. It also attaches importance to the investment in the game industry, so there are many developers reflect that ucloud in the product function of the rich and technical means of operation, than Tencent a lot stronger.

In addition, the domestic platform-type cloud vendors only do the basic services, business lines are relatively flat, not to develop more in-depth functions. "The use of vertical manufacturers of services, because the product modules and functions to do more detailed, can help developers save a lot of development time." "Shen Zhihua introduced. In addition, Alibaba, Tencent and other Internet companies used to provide more simple hosting services, almost no technical services. Now they need to quickly transform into the role of service providers, must be the first time to respond to the needs of developers, more on the availability of services, the stability of higher requirements.

Opportunity: Small Company "Hug Regiment" useful?

Similar to Ucloud and other domestic infrastructure services for small companies, from scratch, but lack of brand awareness and customer resources, the foundation is not in prison. "To do cloud infrastructure services, not only has a high technical threshold, but also the need for sustained capital investment." Only the scale is good to participate in competition, otherwise it is easy to lose money. "Sal believes that developers also want more similar ucloud cloud manufacturers to appear, so that the market can fully compete to avoid the situation of oligopoly."

"In fact, we are equivalent to a company that competes with a Department of Giants. Hua Kun that the advantage of small companies is plowing, to do differentiated products. For example, ucloud to increase bandwidth utilization, the introduction of shared bandwidth products, with more suitable for game developers operating architecture, in the disk I/O performance, such as a lot of work; seven Neu Yun in addition to focus on the storage technology itself, pay close attention to the quality of service, training and technical personnel in line as a customer service, to answer the user phone; It has the advantage of storing less than 100M files, and has increased cloud distribution and processing services.

Hold the Regiment! This is the current strategy of small companies. For example, the seven Neu Yun Select a push to provide push services, cloud testing services Testin, as well as cloud acceleration, cloud security and other services to cooperate with the service providers, they focus on the storage itself. Similarly, ucloud and cloud-making strategic partnerships, together with a variety of cloud services companies, can provide a complete solution for the same customer.

"From a technical point of view, if I choose to shoot cloud storage, then choose Aliyun Host, the middle of the data transmission needs of the network, the flow cost is very high." and the choice Aliyun this one-stop service, because all is uses the intranet transmission, the flow cost is zero. "In fact, do enterprise network disk fast enough, the business has certain particularity, its application and data interaction between very frequent." And the teambition of the team collaboration software will not exist the problem of the network transmission cost. Founder Zi Junhuan chose Aliyun host, cloud storage using seven bull cloud.

"Choose ' alliances ', integration of industry resources, there are opportunities and challenges, because it is difficult to do technology integration." We need to choose to compare the cattle ' teammates ' and eliminate the unsuitable. If ' teammate ' is mixed, easy to contain the development of the platform. "said Sal.

"If Taiwan's one-stop service is really excellent, there will certainly be advantages, at least the account management will be very simple, customers need to pay only one bill." But considering the current state, looking for a professional cloud service provider is the most cost-effective solution. "Seven Neu Yun COO Lu Guihua said, developers select a number of service providers, the current discovery of a problem is: the management of multiple account system slightly cumbersome.

In fact, many of the most important cloud services providers, including Amazon, have experienced downtime, relying on the deployment of backup and recovery systems and related protocols to mitigate the risk of downtime. "At this stage, the IaaS platform service needs to be constantly improved, there will be failures, and the developers need to be tolerant." Jiang Shuo Miao said.

Now, the major cloud services companies are in the development of the user phase of happy enclosure. Cao Li, former CTO of the comics, said: "Once developers put data on a cloud service platform, the cost of data migration will be higher." ”