Opportunities should be "cloud" and server startups

Analyzing the Chinese server market in the first half of 2012, the IBM brand took the lead with 36.1% of the respondents, Dell 25.3% ranked second, Hewlett-Packard ranked third, and the percentage of attention was 7% lower than that of Dell. Looking back at the domestic server brands, Lenovo took the lead with 8.8% of the attention. Inspur and Dawn had a big gap.

The first two years, the domestic server market saw the most is IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell's figure, the vast majority of orders they get, in most cases, Lenovo, Dawn, Inspur these three domestic giants to share. Now, a group of small and medium-sized manufacturers and even former ODMs and OEMs, such as Inventec and Quanta, have come to the forefront and compete directly with international and domestic giants. The server market is on the eve of a changing situation. What makes small companies and OEMs have the courage to invest in the server market? What are they emboldened?

Recently, the reporter learned at the 2012 Cloud World Conference site that cloud computing not only brings about changes in computing models and service models, but also brings new business opportunities to hardware manufacturing companies. However, IT giants do not have innate advantages in the cloud era. Who can turn around faster and better develop products and solutions that are urgently needed in the cloud market, and whoever can make a beautiful turnaround battle.

The server market is turbulent. There are three types of servers in the cloud computing environment that are in demand: high-density servers, storage servers, and servers with balanced computing and storage.

In the non-cloud era, the performance of a single server is the focus of attention, including high computing speed, high processing, high quality, and so on. However, in the cloud era, cloud computing center performance and energy consumption are the focus of attention, which determines the revolutionary changes in the server market.

Deng Hongsheng, vice president of Tiandi Chaoyun (hereinafter referred to as “Super Cloud”) told the “China Electronics News” reporter: “We talked a few years ago that the server is a few cores, 8 cores, 16 cores, and how much? But now, we are concerned It is the computing resources and storage resources provided by the entire cloud computing center in the virtualized environment.The virtualized deployment of the cloud center makes the operation not for a server, but for the entire resource pool.The performance of a single server and other technical indicators are Weakening.The future cloud center will be very centralized, with a very high density, and its energy consumption, investment and maintenance will inevitably be a huge cost. Therefore, high-density, low-power computing center products will become a major demand."

Changes in the era of computing guide changes in demand, and changes in demand drive changes in the product. In the cloud era, the mainstream requirements of servers have changed.

IDC senior analyst Peng Zhenfei told the "China Electronics News" reporter: "There are three types of servers in the cloud computing environment that are in demand: high-density servers, storage servers, servers with balanced computing and storage. High-density servers have high computing density, low cost, and sharing. The power supply and cooling effect are relatively good.These servers are low in cost, but relatively easy and bad, they can't run relatively large and relatively important services. They are generally used to run instant messaging services, website pages, or some small applications. These services are In the Internet environment or relatively peripheral businesses in the cloud computing business, availability requirements are relatively less.

It is understood that Internet companies have become heavyweight users of high-density servers this year, and some large Internet companies purchase about 20,000 to 30,000 high-density servers each quarter. With such a large purchase volume, the cost becomes the key. Peng Zhenfei revealed that Internet companies are buying servers in the form of collective purchasing, and always buy the lowest-priced servers. And those servers with special features will not be favored by Internet companies. In this environment, the original thousands of server procurement is often IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard get orders, but with the popularity of the Internet, cloud computing environment, domestic manufacturers, including domestic small companies, or even OEM ODM companies, such as Quanta, Intime, etc., who are hiding behind, have all come to the forefront of competition in the server market.

Start-ups emerged from the market of small companies to fight the server market. First of all, they must have clear positioning and clear direction. Second, they should focus on their own advantages and form breakthroughs.

In a normal sense, consumer electronics products such as TVs, refrigerators, and PCs will mature with the maturity of technologies and products. Usually, several fixed companies will divide the market to form an oligopoly. It is difficult for latecomers to break this pattern.

Deng Hongsheng told the “China Electronics News” reporter: “There are only two possibilities for latecomers entering this market. First, there may be deep technical or market resources. Second, the industrial structure changes, bringing new opportunities. Without cloud computing, Chaoyun does not have a chance to become a server."

It is understood that Chaoyun's high-density servers have 2U4 nodes. Each node has 8 CPUs. It can also allow room temperature to be between 22 and 30 degrees, and it can maintain at 42 degrees in natural environments. Chaoyun is the only company in the world that can achieve such high-density, low-power servers.

So, why can a large IT company not continue its advantage in the traditional server market and continue to occupy the cloud server market? Deng Hongsheng pointed out that large enterprises have too many burdens, and that there is no rapid adjustment strategy and focus for small businesses, and if this burden is still a burden for making money, then it is even more difficult to grasp opportunities. "Because this bag is now profitable, the company will not be willing to lose, not willing to reduce its size. This is exactly the same year that the Kodak camera first introduced a digital camera, but because it is reluctant to give up the film camera business, unable to extract more human and material resources. On the digital camera, the best opportunity for digital cameras was missed and eliminated."

Traditional server manufacturers, most of their engineers are located in the development of the traditional server, blade, etc., and this business is also in a high state of profit, so that the company is unlikely to recruit a large number of people to strengthen the high-end cloud platform Technology development. “But the traditional application of the whole server is no longer in line with the trend of cloud computing, and the phenomenon of delisting has gradually emerged.” Deng Hongsheng believes that “in a large group of companies, if a department wants to develop a new technology, almost 100% will abortion. The whole team concept, organizational structure, and assessment system are all based on traditional business.The new business is so small, long-term not profitable, no one cares.If there is not enough determination and energy, big companies can not switch type.If it does not Look for this trend and make no adjustments. Anything can happen."

The advantage of small businesses is to quickly capture market opportunities. In Deng Hongsheng's view, small businesses fight the server market, first of all to have a clear positioning and clear direction; second is to focus on their own advantages and form a breakthrough. For example, Chaoyun, focused on high-density servers, launched a leading cloud platform in China and focused on cloud computing servers. Deng Hongsheng also said that Chaoyun is currently very small, but its ambitious goal is to build the first brand of cloud computing servers in China.

Cloud Base Helps Enterprise Innovation Beijing Cloud Base's start-up companies bring together more than 500 high-end R&D personnel from international and domestic cloud computing, and many technologies can be shared.

It can be said that the cloud era has helped the development of small businesses in the cloud market.

High-density servers focus on cost rather than performance, making the threshold for small businesses to enter the field much lower. Peng Zhenfei told the China Electronics News that high-density servers have a relatively short life span, which is closely related to the technical architecture of cloud computing. Because of the cloud architecture, there is no need for a single server to perform well, or the reliability is too high.

It is understood that Internet companies are now more willing to use software technology to solve the availability of hardware. Most of them adopt open source cloud computing software platform, which has the features of scale-out architecture or elastic architecture. The default underlying hardware is not reliable when the platform is designed. Even if it is broken, it does not affect the upper-layer business. Therefore, the servers in the cloud architecture can not be too good, on the contrary, low-cost can also become a competitive advantage. High-density servers are very much in line with this. For example, a four-node server can share a set of power-supply cooling, which can save costs compared with traditional servers, and it can also save the cost of the chassis and cover.

The establishment of the Beijing cloud base also creates opportunities for small businesses. It is understood that the cloud base is a Beijing key industrial project in which social capital and government capital are jointly involved. It is also a group company. The group includes subsidiaries of the cloud computing industry chain, such as server cloud, cloud platform and big data cloud, cloud security cloud, cloud cloud, data center cloud boxes, etc. More than 500 high-end R&D personnel in the field of cloud computing in China.

A certain person in charge of Huiyun told the “China Electronics News” reporter that companies in the cloud base cooperate with each other and many technologies are shared in a certain way to jointly create solutions and applications that are in line with the characteristics of cloud computing. In addition to the leading domestic cloud platform, Huiyun, which focuses on cloud security, has proposed a cloud security product, cloud security technology, and cloud security management "trinity" cloud security platform that can well mobilize the business of other cloud base companies. “Now we are in contact with customers who are very interested in cloud computing but are very worried about security issues. Huiyun’s cloud security solutions are considered from the overall architecture of cloud computing, and the overall solutions for cloud computing driven by cloud security include ultra-clouds. Servers and the technical architecture represented by the Cloud Cloud Platform are all within the framework of cloud security considerations."

At the Cloud World Congress site, an industry source predicted to the "China Electronics News" reporter: "Cloud computing is still based on the traditional model of the server, but in less than two years, its form and technology will undergo a major change, new products will Available to the market.”