Move 2 B: the Blue sea Revolution

It seems that in recent months, as more and more VC investors come to the door through various channels, Zhang is aware that the local mobile 2B and enterprise Mobile Information investment in the field of heating up.

Three years ago, Zhang Lei founded the Cloud Power technology company, mainly focused on enterprise Mobile information platform services, when, the domestic mobile internet is the investment peak, but the hot is the service in the field of personal application 2C projects, the mobile 2B investment in the field, but quite deserted.

Three years later, the pattern is clearly different. Like Zhang Lei, the founder of Sheidang notes that this year's situation has changed, people no longer need too much preaching to be able to understand, and his peers Ming Road, the fans are making frequent appearances. China's elephant Evernote also announced the promotion of an enterprise version – the concept of an enterprise-class mobile application seems to have started in China.

In fact, the wave of corporate mobility has been spectacular in Silicon Valley, on the other side of the ocean. Deng, the founding partner of the Arctic Light, told the Chinese investment community in a public speech that the Silicon Valley's wind investment in the 2B was far more than 2C in the second half of 2011.

Just last month, another well-known international brand VC partner after participating in several Bay Area forum, regrets, "Now the Silicon Valley, has not been popular talk about social networking, E-commerce, are talking about mobile 2B."

According to the consultancy Appcelerator's "Corporate Mobility Report", based on a survey of 770 plus business leaders, most companies see mobility as a transformative tool, with the 2013 goal of creating 5 or more mobile apps. IBM, the traditional giant, put forward a "mobile first" strategy earlier this year, announcing the army's march into the mobile arena.

Compared with the US market, where 1 billion dollar valuations have emerged, the domestic mobile 2B sector has been blossoming, but with few people. The reason, Jin Shanyun President Wang Yulin told our correspondent, the domestic Mobile information industry is still in the primary stage, annual profit can reach 1.002 billion of the enterprise is a leader.

But in fact, some of the pioneers of mobile informatization have been making profits in silence. Zhang Lei, who has already begun to lay out three years ago, is not satisfied with the net profit of 2012 millions of, he is plotting how to create a "profit step" in the field of Enterprise mobile informatization, and how to make cloud power a tens profit company as soon as possible.

"We are expected to have a big breakout in 2013, with the potential to make nearly 20 million of the profits," he said. "said Zhang. He has been in the service of large enterprises in the field of Mobile information has been a lot of "profit fulcrum."

In fact, over the years, China's local Mobile information enterprises, mostly to serve small and medium-sized enterprises, while the Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises, automation and information base relatively weak, mobile penetration is far less than the United States.

"Large enterprises have funds, strategic foresight, is willing to invest in the field of Mobile information, there is to seize the future competitive commanding heights of the driving force, should be Mobile information field in the future the most imaginative field." Zhang Lei believes.

In his view, and once to promote China's business management changes in the CRM,ERP and other software technology brought about by the tide of change, the next 5-10 years, Chinese enterprises will start a business Mobile information transformation to Mobile information services, applications, platforms, etc. as the main technical impetus, enterprise workflow, internal management, With the customer and market trading methods, etc., will usher in a new format.

So, in the market as the next piece of the Blue Ocean enterprise mobile applications, China's soil can grow a few star enterprises? Facing almost no one's blue sea, mobile 2B entrepreneurs, is that gratifying, or sad?

The CFO's Delight, the CIO's melancholy

The spring moving 2B is coming quietly with the popularization of terminal equipment.

According to research reports, 2012, the domestic smartphone sales of about 189 million units, tablet sales are also climbing, more than 30 million a year, the corresponding global sales of 117 million units. Arctic Light Venture investment manager Lin Lu pointed out that the popularity of domestic mobile terminals has surpassed the current year's PC. However, because of the low popularity of PCs, the popularization and application of traditional enterprise-level applications are difficult.

In Lin Lu's view, the problem of the popularity of mobile devices is itself creating new entrepreneurial opportunities for enterprise-wide applications. Thus, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) can become a trend.

However, the situation is not one-sided. "Bring your own equipment to work" sounds to be a delight to the CFO, who is no longer required to configure mobile phones for all employees, but for CIOs (CIO), the pressure is unprecedented.

Lin Lu explained that companies usually set up private clouds in their own computer room, employees in mobile, must be through VPN to connect to the company office. VPNs are far from new, in fact, as Lin Lu and some insiders have pointed out, VPN applications in mobile devices, the company's information management buried many hidden dangers.

"First of all, it will be very complicated to deploy the system such as mailbox and company WiFi." "Lin Lu said. Second, employees in the mobile phone installed in other software, regardless of the virus or tampered with the game, have access to the company's internal network of authority, to the enterprise information security poses a great challenge.

This gives birth to the market for MDM (Mobile Device Management, the management of cellular devices) and breeds many good companies. In the US, the mobile iron of Sequoia Capital is valued at more than $600 million trillion, while rival AirWatch, with more than 6,000 customers, announced a 200 million-dollar a-round financing earlier this year and a listing scandal with another Marvell.

However, the mend of VPN and the security of the public cloud, VPC (Virtual Private cloud) is on the up. Last quarter, the CIA and Amazon signed 600 million-dollar orders, which provided virtual private cloud services.

For enterprises, both MDM and VPC are involved in it background processing. This is the source of ideas for entrepreneurs such as Cloud Power technology CEO Zhang Lei: Designing a mobile cloud platform to build a channel between traditional IT systems and carrier networks.

The winter of the product, the spring of the service

"The potential market for mobile 2B software is small and medium sized enterprises, although the profits from big business customers are good, but the scope is limited." Kleiner China management partner Zhou Wei said in an interview.

However, for a long time, because of the existence of the piracy factor, the software service market of the small and medium-sized enterprises has not been well developed, Newqui pointed out. However, in recent years from the electric business growth of a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, enterprises and services companies to contact small and medium-sized enterprises to reduce the cost of channel. In addition, the increase in labor costs has provided a good environment for the growth of the software market.

The question now is: How to cater to the needs of SMEs? "Service is the trend. "Zhou Wei points out. And the current mobile 2B applications commonly used in the cloud SaaS services, and simply sell software business model is fundamentally different.

For example, Zhang Lei's cloud-powered technology offers customers a cloud platform that uses SaaS leasing rather than direct selling. Based on the overall solution for the enterprise, software development, platform, and app to promote three parts of revenue, the start-up in 2012 to achieve 50 million yuan in revenue.

"If the system is not good, the service is not good, your terminal is no one to use." "For customers, the SaaS model allows for risk sharing, and the customer does not have to buy a one-time buyout and fixed investment is reduced," Zhang said. The initial cost is much lower than the original software purchase, and there is no need for a dedicated team to maintain hardware.

However, can the payment of SMEs support the survival of enterprises? Standing in the service provider's position, Zhang said that although the upfront fees may be difficult to maintain, but once you can establish long-term relationship with customers, the yield curve will gradually rise, less like the traditional software companies face fluctuations in the income curve.

For companies that develop value-added applications, are the reliability and geometry of the free model? The conversion curve of Evernote free users to paid users gives confidence to other entrepreneurs. 6 months after the launch of the product, the number of paid users was 1%, and the value reached 5.5% after two years.

And, unlike 2C products, enterprise-class applications have a natural barrier. "The user's stickiness is high. "Sheidang notes that for businesses, if a set of applications satisfies them, the likelihood of being replaced is not high, and there is no need for a business to have two or more management systems at the same time." "As long as 5% of customers are willing to pay, the sea notes will be able to live well." "Sheidang said. At present, the Sea notes the product of the micro-tribe paid version, the monthly cost of 10 yuan per person.

According to business needs, angel investors, Mobile2.0 founder Wang Lijie concluded that the opportunity to move 2B will come from the following five aspects:

To help traditional brand enterprises to do mobile application development outsourcing, to help traditional online merchants to provide management based on SaaS architecture, to help traditional production enterprises to provide management platform, to realize the automatic docking with the electric business platform, to participate in the transaction Commission, to provide sales staff business display, interactive and management of mobile applications and help enterprises to complete market research and advertising effect monitoring and other matters.

Under this framework, some "seemingly earthy" companies are also giving birth to new values. Kleiner is looking for a company similar to 3VR, a Silicon Valley start-up. Using their commercial video analytics services, retail and catering chains can be monitored at any time by using a video system placed in the cloud, with a mobile phone or computer, which pays for the annual service charge.

But as Zhou Wei says, this is just a cloud of primary monitoring applications, and its subsequent value lies in video-based business management assistance, which provides a daily stream of people analysis, security reporting, and early warning. At the same time in the cloud to achieve a two-way communication action, and not just to complete the simple "monitoring" action.

In addition, if you start with an enterprise-wide application of real users, employees call for good apps. Sheidang that the traditional enterprise software is for the boss and IT department service, "as long as the boss to pay the bill." The user experience of the past 2B software is not the same as that of the 2C end, because there are no employees for the end-use software. How to increase the satisfaction of employees ' experience and improve the efficiency of internal communication is the key consideration of the entrepreneur and some of his peers.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)