Friends system: The ladder to the "cloud"

Cloud computing is a tide of IT industry, ebb and flow, the existing IT vendors will face a new baptism, the elimination will be swept away by this tide, the same, a group of new IT vendors will emerge. Located in Beijing Cloud base of Beijing Friends Tianyu System Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Friends of the system) is a new face in the cloud computing tide, it is born with cloud computing tide, is experiencing the test of the cloud computing market.

As a link in the cloud computing industry chain, especially in the cloud computing software in the bottom--cloud computing platform, friends of the system products appear too professional, but also not well-known, but its products are the core of cloud computing platform, friends of the system in their own words, is a ladder to the world of cloud computing. As one of the few master cloud computing platform Core technology manufacturers, friends of the system around the strong ring. How does a friend's system position itself in the cloud computing world, and how does its products respond to market demand? A few days ago, our correspondent on the related issues exclusive interview with Friends of the founder of the system, friends of the system CEO, Silicon Valley returned Dr. Yao Hongyu.

Discovering the nature of cloud computing

On cloud computing, there are many definitions on the market, and almost everyone has their own understanding. As a true professional in cloud computing core technology, Yao Hongyu that this is not surprising, this is a new technological change must experience, as before the distributed computing, Grid computing and even the internet, in time, people's opinions will inevitably converge.

"Cloud computing is a business model and a technological advance." He said that cloud computing can be understood from the two aspects: from a business model perspective, cloud computing is the extension of the Internet model and development, it extends the service of the Internet from the original information services to hardware resources, software resources and all the things related to it. "I call cloud computing the Internet 2.0. In terms of service patterns, cloud computing is essentially the same as the Internet, delivering services via the Internet, but the cloud has expanded the scope. From a technical point of view, cloud computing is nothing more than a lot of different kinds, distributed across the network through the combination of resources, this combination is called ' cloud '. ”

Cluster computing, distributed computing, parallel computing, and grid computing are some of the concepts that people, especially some technicians, refer to when they talk about cloud computing. Yao Hongyu that there is a close relationship between these concepts, parallel computing and distributed computing and many other concepts are from the earliest clustering technology evolved.

In the development of computer science, there are two different development concepts of large-scale computing, one is called "Share modifiable (all are shared)", one is called "Share nothing (All is exclusive)". The first representative of the idea is parallel computing, its implementation is the supercomputer, the super computer storage, memory and CPU are shared, such as the CPU may have thousands of, but from the operating system level is a CPU. The commercial application of products under this technical route is narrower, the main application in a number of specific areas, social and commercial impact is relatively small; the second idea is distributed computing, where each node is a stand-alone unit, and each small unit can do its own calculations to do all the work of the computer. The current computer application system is basically the product of this system.

However, these ideas and development directions eventually lead to cloud computing. The essence of cloud computing is to be able to combine various resources organically with many technologies such as distributed computing, cluster computing, grid computing and so on, so that we can see "cloud" outside, instead of seeing many small computer nodes. At the same time, no matter what happens in the cloud, the business system above is unaffected. This means that the cloud is big enough and resilient enough. The core technology of the friend system is to realize the integration of resources, especially the data resources, and to shield the technical complexity. "Yao Hongyu said.

Creating cloud computing operating systems

At the beginning of the establishment, friends of the system to its own positioning is the basic software technology provider, and then further explicitly as a cloud computing platform technology provider. "Although not daring to say that IBM and Oracle competitors, but we and their products are indeed at a level, and most of the domestic IT companies are not the same." Yao Hongyu Frankly, because of the professionalism of their technology, it is not easy to describe to the general public what they are doing.

Yao Hongyu its products into a cloud computing operating system. He said that from the traditional it architecture, friends of the system's products are middleware, located on the operating system, application systems, using cloud computing middleware is more appropriate, but given the name of the middleware is not clear to the Chinese people, The cloud-computing operating system is named because the overall architecture of its products is indeed the same as the operating system in traditional computer systems. "Of course, we propose that the cloud-computing operating system is not from the traditional IT architecture perspective, but more about the future." ”

Yao Hongyu explains that a typical computer composition consists of a CPU, a memory, a disk plus a shell, which is the typical structure of a Neumann computer. If it is assumed that this unit is distributed over 10,000 machines, and is a whole of dozens of compute nodes, and that the "supercomputer (this is the cloud)" is managed using software from a variety of friend systems, then the software is the cloud computing operating system. Because the business system is built on the friend system software, the following is a stand-alone operating system and hardware, for the business system under the whole thing is equivalent to a virtual computer. From this perspective, the work done by the friend system's products and the operating system on the normal computer is similar.

However, cloud computing operating system is not our common operating system, now known as the cloud computing operating system is not much, including VMware's vsphere and wave of cloud OS. What is the difference between the cloudware of the cloud computing operating system?
In Yao Hongyu's view, the direction is basically the same, but with VMware and the wave of cloud computing operating system focused on virtualization and the management of the virtualized environment, the friend system's cloud computing system is more focused on the concentration and integration of resources. "I think the ultimate goal of cloud computing is that the front desk is a myriad of terminals, backstage is a cloud." The role of cloud computing operating system is to be able to put this "piece" cloud management, so that the end is really a "cloud" (here a cloud refers to is like a machine), the front needs of things backstage through a unified standard interface can provide. Technically, the cloud-computing operating system provides an SDK or API for the foreground. It can manage all the distributed resources in the background, so that the front end is a machine, the management system is called cloud computing operating system, virtual machine management is only one part.

Develop 5 core Products

The cloud computing operating system of friends is not a separate software, but a series of core products composed of friends. Yao Hongyu These products into two levels: at the core of the bottom of the three, including Bitsflow, NETVM, Datacell, on top of its platform products have two, that is, the intellectual deposit, Chi Wei, are independent intellectual property rights and core technology. Among them, Bitsflow is mainly responsible for communication and collaboration among large-scale distributed systems, and is a highly fault-tolerant, high-performance data exchange and application collaboration platform; Datacell is a distributed storage system for mass data, also known as cloud storage NETVM is a distributed management system and distributed computing development Framework, which is the total scheduling in three products.

"These three products are equivalent to three engines, like the Linux kernel, to support the top 2 platform-level products, respectively, is the intellectual deposit, Chi Wei." Yao Hongyu said that the intellectual deposit is mainly targeted at objects and file storage, similar to file systems, Chi Wei is used as a large-scale system of transport and peacekeeping control. ”

It is worth mentioning that all of these products are responsible for network communications Bitsflow is the most basic, but also friends of the system to distinguish other cloud computing companies the biggest core competitiveness. Yao Hongyu The technical route of cloud computing into three categories, one is to store as the core, Google as the representative; The first category is virtualization as the core, VMware as the representative; The third category is the hybrid represented by Amazon. And friends of the system to choose the technical route is different from the above three, friends of the system is based on network communications, which is Yao Hongyu value bitsflow reasons.

"We're focused on network communications, based on the results we've been focusing on in large distributed systems for years." "Yao Hongyu explains," the so-called distributed system is based on the premise of network delay, if the network infinitely fast, it is not a distributed system, but become a supercomputer. Our work is to try to put the network layer of things managed well, which is equivalent to shorten the distribution system in the distance between the various modules, which is the theoretical basis of our company's entire technology. Yao Hongyu said that it is precisely because of the choice of such a technical concept, so that friends of the system to solve the distributed system of coordination and data exchange issues, which greatly simplifies the other follow-up product development technology challenges.

Yao Hongyu Frankly, due to the professionalism of the product, especially the focus on the bottom of the cloud, and the solution is different from the traditional methods of technology, so that their products in the promotion of the first problem is how to explain to customers what their technology is. But the biggest challenge he faced was the immature market, for example, in the solution of mass data integration, people are more inclined to the traditional database based on a variety of integrated technology, but did not think or also not agree with the friends of the system proposed by the solution, although the friends of the system to achieve lower cost, faster online.

"Fortunately, the technology and cost advantages are obvious, Word-of-mouth is gradually established, these years of projects gradually developed, especially in the financial, telecommunications, electricity, government, Internet, education and other industries, our progress every year is very significant." Yao Hongyu said his focus in the future was to continue to nurture the market while perfecting his own products. He said his biggest wish was a day when users could recognize the technology of friends of the company, as they did with the recognition of relational databases.

= = = Interview Notes

Confidence comes from the accurate grasp of technology

After interviewing Yao Hongyu, several were impressed. The first is his technical background, the second is to grasp the market, and the third is a friend of the business model of the system.

Outside a mention of Yao Hongyu, often to say that he studied at Hkust class, the United States to study technology, and then work in Yahoo. The part that involves Yao Hongyu technology is often vague. Yao Hongyu said that it is because of a Yahoo experience, so he really understand the charm of the Internet and technology development trends. So, in the interview, he repeatedly compared the cloud computing and the Internet, convinced that cloud computing is "IT industry really a new technology change, the impact of not knowing how much." "He also believes that" the product is not called cloud computing does not matter, we do is with large data, large systems are related to these things, but now catch up with the trend of cloud computing. ”

His confidence stems from technology rather than conceptual hype.

Due to the importance of technology, the company set up a few years later, has been doing technical development work, and did not focus on promoting the market. "Now many users ask questions, other companies can not do it, only to find us." Yao Hongyu said that the first technology to meet the needs of users, the second is a substantial savings in user investment, up to 60% of the investment can be reduced. So, in terms of supply and demand, he's not short of market. But the user also has the worry, because the technology is too new, the existing product cannot solve the situation, can only hold to try the attitude. This makes Yao Hongyu have to quite a lot of trouble to explain the user again and again technology.

In the business model, the sale of the friend system is divided into two parts. The first is the direct sales of products, mainly to end users; Friends of the system hope that the former can directly solve the user needs, the latter can form an ecological chain.
Said cloud computing manufacturers a lot, under the concept of "new bottles of old wine" manufacturers are also many, but who can win in this change, I am afraid that the final or "technical faction" to decide. As Yao Hongyu finally said at the end of the interview: "We have some plans for the future technical route, but this is not a framed restriction." The future of the technology will be how to develop, no one can say clearly. But at least cloud computing can affect this generation. We're all on the road to groping. ”

(Executive Editor: Advanced Technology)