There is no shortage of data mining talent in China, but it is difficult to find data scientists

Absrtact: In order to meet the coming Big Data era, the big internet companies are racing against the clock. Alibaba launched the offensive in the six months after announcing the big data-sharing platform. But even the pioneers of the industry, the big data Age has

"The big internet companies are racing against the clock to meet the big data age." Alibaba launched the offensive in the six months after announcing the big data-sharing platform. But even the pioneers of the industry, there is no small distance from the big data age. "

In the past 2012, Qin has a great regret, is not able to recruit the data scientists they want to waste the company to recruit places. He is the owner of Alipay User Value Innovation Center. The center is the core department of Alipay's big data business.

Alibaba 2012-year index only 200, specific to Alipay company, basically is only out, only Qin to where the department received a rare two places. But she only recruited a suitable one.

In fact, major internet companies are looking for such people. Lau, president of Tencent's network media group, said publicly in 2012: with the accumulation of all kinds of data, large data age has come. Tencent has its own data mining team in all major product lines. Tencent's latest results show that the number of QQ users close to 800 million people, the number of active users nearly 200 million people.

Ali Group announced July 10, 2012, the establishment of the Chief Data Officer post (CDO), responsible for promoting the "Data sharing platform" strategy. On the same day, Ali released the "Poly Stone Tower" platform for the cat, Taobao platform for the electrical and Electronic business service providers and other services to provide data cloud.

Alibaba Group says it is at the heart of this strategy how to tap, analyze and use the data and share it with the whole society. Alibaba is the annual turnover of China's largest e-commerce platform, the current 20,000 people, including nearly thousands of people engaged in data business work.

As you can see from the data, the Nuggets have become the consensus of major internet companies. But how will these companies move forward in the coming big Data age?

"There's no distance from the big data age."

Qin is not looking for a general data analyst.

"There is no shortage of data-mining talent in China, but it's hard to find data scientists. Qin to Southern weekend reporter said Qin to the team has 7 people, they are called "data scientists" inside Alipay.

The general data analyst is based on the various data of Alipay analysis, to the company decision makers and various business departments to provide advisory support. This is the main function of the Business Intelligence department that many companies now have. But what the data scientists are doing is developing large, commercially available data products that can be sold.

The so-called large data, generally more than 1000T of data, if according to the general machine configuration, equivalent to 400 to 500 computers. The commercial development of these data information is the big data industry chain.

In the big data age, the data will become a fundamental resource in the economy, like land, oil and capital. Data scientists are thought to be the hottest jobs for the next 10 years.

The most intimate relationship between large data and individuals is the possible intrusion of privacy. For example, Amazon monitors our shopping habits, Google watches our web browsing habits, Twitter seems to have a good relationship with our friends, QQ Circle can recommend you do not want to meet a girl's photos and dynamic information.

Qin is a computer simulation postdoctoral fellow returned from the United States, worked in JPMorgan Chase and HSBC for many years, joined Alipay company in 2010, and was responsible for Alipay and Taobao Fair's big data business. Alipay Company has the personal data information of China after banking.

"Alibaba has a huge amount of data, for big data people, Alibaba is China's best platform, very attractive." I chose Alipay because of my financial background. Qin to Southern weekend reporter said.

After returning to the big data industry, Qin took part in many large data forums and seminars, and her biggest experience was that there were few new things to see.

"Don't say big data, even small data." Now many companies say large data, mostly data collection and collation. This is the bottom of the work. "China is still a long way from the big Data age," Qin Yu said. ”

Even as a pioneer in the country's large data business, Alibaba, its big data business is still scattered across its subsidiaries, and in the second half of 2012 began to launch a small number of commercial products.

"Start with someone."

Alipay once set up the data department the day after the company was founded eight years ago, but the real big data business was in 2010. At that time, Alipay from the China Merchants Bank Credit Card Center attracted a group of professional financial talent. Qin also joined Alipay at that time.

"The big data business in the financial sector has matured. "Qin Yu said.

Alipay data What scientists do every day is to divide clients into 50 groups for research. For example, fine separation of urban light mature male groups, the characteristics of this group is not expensive each time to buy, the average price of seventy or eighty yuan, income medium, but very like to buy things online.

There is also a group called "daughter of the United States Girl", which is characterized by low income, but the family rich, buy more, buy expensive.

According to the idea of grouping research, Qin gave the team to Taobao, Cat, Alipay and the cost of the user to do a systematic study, by watching what they like to see the media, on what network, to "vividly" know what the user is, and then recommend the goods for users to buy.

When you are able to identify a user, you are no longer using the "pro" as a starting point when writing a product's recommended text.

"Today many websites make the mistake of recommending a similar product based on a personal purchase record." In fact, users are likely to have bought. What the user wants is for you to recommend a person who is similar to him to buy something. Qin told Southern weekend reporters that the previous data research idea is from the product, the big data age is from people, first to find someone.

Alipay development of large data business, currently mainly for internal services. For example, in the past Alipay paid great attention to the acquisition of new customers, but later found that open accounts more people, close the account of many people, through data analysis, Alipay set up a loss warning model, predicting whether each person will leave Alipay in the next three months, and the potential loss of users do some wake-up.

"Alipay is a quasi financial industry, the data is relatively sensitive, involving user privacy, has not yet been to the opening stage." Qin to Southern weekend reporter said, Alipay is very taboo to provide commercial products to the merchant, many partners are thinking of Alipay is the data, but this is Alipay's high-voltage line.

"Alipay development of large data for the purpose, with Taobao and the day cat a little deviation." We are more for the internal service, Taobao and the day cat more emphasis on commercialization. Qin told Southern weekend reporters that Alibaba Group's big data business is mainly Taobao platform for several companies in the promotion.

"Data sharing platform" strategy

Taobao platform can be divided into three pieces of data, one is off-line data, such as where people like to eat hairy crabs. Some other online data, mainly pictures, Taobao some of the big sellers are the image of Taobao inside. Other information is the user's Taobao favorites.

In March 2010, Taobao announced that it would open the world's first data for the first date and set two broad principles: data levels Open, and absolute protection of data involving consumers ' personal or corporate privacy.

Taobao's data is open one is free information for the public, such as the introduction of macroeconomic data similar to the "Taobao index." Business can be based on the past sales information and "Taobao index" for production, inventory decision-making. For the public, Taobao's data release is like the function of the statistics bureau and the price Monitoring agency, Taobao index is equivalent to the industry and macro-economic indicators.

As for the enterprise's data open commercial products, Taobao launched a data cube products, Taobao data cube platform, merchants can directly through the data cube products to obtain the industry macro-situation, their brand market conditions, consumer behavior, etc., but can not obtain competitor data.

April 2011, the data cube officially online. In the "waiter" of the promotion, Lin Wood Industry became the first batch of users. Lin Wood is a company that relies entirely on internet platforms to sell furniture.

The company a marketing staff to the Southern Weekend reporter introduced the data cube of the specific use of the process: according to the data cube on the hot word of the various data changes, timely adjustment to optimize the title of goods, improve the ranking of baby, and then get more traffic, improve sales.

To sell mask-oriented vegetarian Wild cat flagship store operations manager Lin told the South Weekend reporter, Suno select the Professional version of the data cube, pay 3600 yuan/year cost, in addition to the Rubik's Cube, you can also use the Quantum Heng Road (Taobao officially launched a free Data analysis tool).

"The data Rubik's Cube brings more is the fictitious concept, to the flow, the sales volume this specific target is not very meaningful." "Lin said.

June 2011, Taobao is divided into three, into a day cat, Taobao market and a Amoy net. After that, the main task of the big Data development of Taobao department is put into the day cat platform that the merchant has formed the pay habit. At present, the cat's flagship large data commercial products are poly Stone Pagoda.

July 2012, Alibaba Group "Poly Stone Tower" officially released, "Data sharing platform" strategy is fully launched. Poly Pagoda is Alibaba's first joint group of large data to build a large data commercial products. Among them, the day cat and Taobao is mainly responsible for the search for partners, the development of business, Aliyun is responsible for providing cloud host, million network responsible for customer service.

At the same time, Alibaba Company's CEO Lu as the group's chief data Officer post, to CEO Ma Yun Direct report. Ma Yun announced the new strategy of Ali group in the future: Platform, finance, data.

Poly Stone Tower Provides data storage, data computing two types of services. According to the guidance of the official online price, if the need for memory for 1200M, 50G capacity of data storage services, the preferential price of 6090 yuan/year; If you purchase the Intel dual-core processor, memory 4G, hard drive 500G, bandwidth 5M Flexible hosting service, the price is about 7700 yuan/year.

Guangzhou Clothing Cool Clothing Co., Ltd. 's operating director Jingxiao told Southern Weekend reporters that their company began to use Poly Stone Tower service in September 2012, just in time to catch the "double 11" big promotion, in two days to send out all the goods, a total of more than 30,000 votes. He is responsible for the operation of the company's flagship store at the shop of the Cat on the day cat.

"Without this software, we can't finish the goods for half a month." "To the Tiger to the South weekend reporter said, if according to 2011 years did not join the Poly Stone Tower when the" double 11 "sales, light to manually download the order to spend 35 days. And there have been a lot of leaks and repeated downloads.

However, Jingxiao said, if the shop day sales can do more than 500 votes, the purchase of Poly Stone Tower service is more cost-effective, otherwise the software to buy down in addition to deal with "double 11" Such a big promotion, the basic idle.

Data source: IBM "the opportunity to interpret large data from a strategic perspective"

The industrial chain after the platform

Alibaba announced the information, since July 10, 2012 Poly Stone Tower release, has more than 100,000 of merchants settled in. Poly Stone Tower's order coverage, October in the middle of the number is 20%.

The 2012 "Double 11" shopping carnival is a test for the development of large data on the cat. According to the official data of the cat, the Carnival promotion Day, the Poly Stone Tower within the system processing orders more than the total number of cats 20%, up 20 times times than usual.

Another city company is the first to enter the Poly Stone Tower Server project software it enterprises. Another city company's sales staff Lai Live dragon on the South weekend reporter said that there are ERP system merchants can directly find the cat, no ERP system merchants, can only find like another city such with the cat has the cooperation of software companies, so that software vendors to help access the Poly Stone Tower service.

Another city and Alibaba mode of cooperation is, another city based on the development of Poly Stone Tower software, docking taobao and Tian-cat, such as the company's backend system, including order information, commodity information, membership information, financial information, logistics information and inventory information.

Lai Live dragon on the South Weekend reporter revealed that the last six months, his focus has been to sell poly stone stone products, a lot of businesses to hear is the sale of software products will be called phone calls, now the situation is much better, many businesses take the initiative to call to understand the situation.

"This is very related to the publicity of the cat, and the other is that the Double 11 examines the value of the product." "Lai Live Dragon said."

Lai Live Dragon also admitted that after the merchants joined the Stone tower, the most intuitive change is the efficiency of order processing increased, previously downloaded from the Taobao platform order, a minute can download 200 single, now at least 2000 single. But sales have not changed much.

More and more businesses are being forced to take part in the purchase of large data products.

Because of more and more promotional activities, to participate in the words, IT systems often do not keep up, resulting in a single distribution problem, the difference in the evaluation ensued, dynamic scoring straight down, sales followed down, so can only be the purchase of Poly Stone Tower service. Without participation, there is no traffic, no sales.

"If the merchant does not follow Taobao go, will be left out, you come in, meet double 11 such activity, the cat will see whether you join the Stone Pagoda, if not joined, you enroll the qualification can pass is a big problem." "Lai Live Dragon said."