From concept to mano the undercurrent of Chinese public cloud

As Microsoft Mircosoft Azure announces its business in China, players in the Chinese public cloud market are sprinting for the final shape of Amazon's AWS.

Everyone knows that when AWS is ready to go on sale, the advantage of its global market may be the start of a big change in the Chinese market and a white-hot state of bayonet, and now everyone is preparing ammunition for that starting point.

The relative closure of the data, the difference between the domestic and international networks and the data estrangement of Netcom Telecom will be the problems of the public cloud layout, and solving any problem may mean the change of market share.

IDC, a research firm, predicted in 2013 that China's public cloud market would reach 24.6 billion yuan in 2016, with an annual composite growth rate of 38.6%, compared with a 2013 figure of 4.7 billion yuan. More worthy of the hard work of all manufacturers, China's public cloud market is expected to show a completely different share and the market proportion of other regions.

From concept to combat, just because the temptation here is big enough.

Microsoft's false-

This March, Microsoft Azure, which announced a one-year landing and nearly a year on the ground, officially announced its business in China, the first international public cloud.

Many of the benefits of false-jump, a direct example, some companies using AWS in the global market at this stage in the country can not find replacements, so the use of Microsoft Azure.

There are some reasons to point out that in the infrastructure and services (IaaS) area, China's public cloud because of policy, the data and the global market itself is isolated, so each enterprise can choose to change suppliers in the process, rather than the expansion of American enterprises to Western Europe, Devices that use the same vendor can migrate more easily.

One of the most immediate challenges to a false jump is the need to nurture the market. To Microsoft on the day, Azure in China's customers 3,000, 160 formal pay users, but most of the SME customers, the majority of the use of large enterprises is the previous cloud users, a short time part of the attempt, or long-term Microsoft partners.

To Horse Spring Festival Gala Live, for example, CNTV Average daily request is roughly 40 million, but the Spring Festival evening when the request is soaring to the usual number of times. In the past, Cntv needs to build servers, bandwidth, and deploy new application clusters to host spikes. But the horse Gala has worked with Microsoft to use Microsoft Azure for the overall peak operation, with a final cost of 10%. Short-time peak value is always the most favorite textbook of cloud computing, which is the highest proportion of resource accumulation.

But what Microsoft is looking for is from tasting sweetness to being fully settled. Like Blue Harbor, in the early days, the Blue Harbor is the first choice and WP platform to launch the WP version of the hand tour, and then try to use Azure version of the game of the server distribution, Operation Dimension, due to the flow of hand travel, dosage changes, the use of paid mode than their own deployment of hardware to improve a lot Finally, Blue Harbor became a model user of Azure.

These cases are still early, and Microsoft Azure's defense of AWS is fundamentally about price. According to the internal disclosure, the biggest change in Azure's offer is not to reference the flow rate, but only to consider the stock. This is quite different from industry practice, where cloud users previously purchased a comprehensive quote for unit data storage capabilities and bandwidth, while Microsoft took out a price that only considered storage capacity in China. This and Microsoft in China's operator century interconnection has a deep connection.

Low-key Tiger AWS

If the pricing behavior of Microsoft is determined to be a price war if it is just deployed, then the object can only be the existing platform-Aliyun, because AWS has just announced a partnership agreement by the end of 2013, a certain amount of time to be used.

But no one can underestimate AWS, in the strongest IaaS market, the 2012 AWS computing capacity was twice times that of the other 14 major competitors, and in 2013, Gartner considered AWS computing capacity to be 5 times times more than 14 competitors. According to official figures, AWS's increased computing power every day equals the computing power needed for Amazon's $7 billion trillion in annual revenue. In other words, AWS is adding a 7 billion-dollar company every day to provide service capabilities.

On the big business side, the 600 million dollar business of the CIA in July 2013 chose AWS over IBM to become the most distinctive ad in AWS, while only 13 of small and medium-sized startups, Instagram, sold to Facebook for $1 billion, All of its IT requirements come from AWS. In addition, a series of star companies, including Dow Jones, News Corp, Samsung, Ericsson, Yelp, Dropbox, Airbnb and LinkedIn, are endorsing AWS.

At the end of 2013, AWS announced the first batch of invited Chinese enterprises, millet, NetQin, LAN pavilion, etc. have experienced the use of enterprises were invited to join. According to official instructions, AWS is currently in the process of being invited to test at home.

Compared to IaaS services, AWS has richer data building capabilities and platform usage capabilities. A CTO said that the experience of using AWS is highly variable and more operational after familiarity. Another engineer believes that AWS is like a building block paradise for IT staff, but that does not necessarily have the same advantage in front of the financial operator.

Currently, the first AWS Data center in Beijing, the signing of Ningxia will be the next step forward. If the pace of Microsoft's layout, AWS may delay its services in China for a year or so, and after that, it remains doubtful whether AWS can recover a year's disadvantage.

The oligarch competition behind the price war

At the end of March, Google first slashed the price of cloud services, Amazon also announced the following on 27th, of which S3 services down 51%, Microsoft and other platforms have been cut. In the week, Aliyun also announced a cut of about 20% of the price. The fierce price war itself in the reaction of the nature of the industry is also reflected in the cruelty of the industry.

Efficient cloud services management, more customers, cheaper IT equipment purchase prices, more efficient operations, lower prices, in the increasingly mature business model of the public cloud, falling prices are accompanied by an increasing concentration of resources.

Starting with AWS, Amazon lowered its 42 server prices, including just this time, with falling prices and rising performance, allowing Moore's law to apply to cloud computing for the first time.

It comes with new competitors getting harder to get into, and the industry's barriers are rising. Established technology accumulation, resources, data center construction and price have formed a considerable threshold. After Google, Microsoft and Amazon, it is still hard to say whether the late transition of IBM and Oracle will return to the mainstream. The latter two companies still have an advantage over private clouds and mixed clouds. Of course, in the Chinese market, Google's not participating and AWS's lagging behind is Microsoft's opportunity.

Cloud computing is a lasting process of change in production, and in the transition, opportunities for domestic manufacturers are constantly being squeezed. Last year's "Go to IoE" executed the most thorough Ali in the effort to become the remainder. In addition to the local market experience, Aliyun also need to be a spontaneous technical barriers to do firewalls.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)