阿里雲的領先之志

Alibaba provoked an Amazon-style ripple of interest from investors when it reported its quarterly numbers: revenues at AliCloud, its eight-year-old cloud services business, rose 115 per cent year on year to $254m.

阿里巴巴(Alibaba)的季報顯示：該集團有8年曆史的雲服務——阿里雲(AliCloud)在最新季度的營收同比增長115%，達到2.54億美元。這使投資者對阿里巴巴產生了類似於對亞馬遜(Amazon)的興趣。

The aMount may be tiny, at just 3 per cent of the Chinese ecommerce group’s $7.7bn quarterly revenues, but for analysts, the parallel was clear. Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, went from zero to three-quarters of the US ecommerce group’s operating profit over the next decade. AWS, with $11bn of sales last year, is the world’s biggest cloud business.

上述數字也許微不足道，在這家中國電商集團合計77億美元的季度營收中只佔了3%，然而在分析師們看來，阿里巴巴與亞馬遜之間有着明顯的相似之處。美國電商亞馬遜在2006年推出的雲服務Amazon Web Services (AWS)，十年之間從零發展到佔集團營業利潤的四分之三。AWS已是全球最大的雲服務提供商，去年銷售額達到110億美元。

Underlining the role of, and money in, cloud services in the US is Snap. The owner of messaging app Snapchat will spend $2bn with Google Cloud over the next five years and is reliant on the search giant’s infrastructure for “the vast majority of [its] computing, storage, bandwidth and other services”, according to its IPO filing.

Snap的例子凸顯了雲服務在美國的地位及吸金能力。這家旗下擁有消息應用Snapchat的公司在首次公開發行(IPO)文件中披露，未來5年將花費20億美元購買谷歌雲(Google Cloud)的服務，依靠這家搜索引擎巨頭的基礎設施來獲得“絕大部分的計算、存儲、帶寬及其他服務”。

China is trailing, but growing rapidly: total spending on public cloud services is forecast to rise from $11.2bn in 2016 to $14.2bn this year, according to Gartner, the research firm — a tenth of the $141bn expected to be spent in the US in 2017.

中國目前落後於美國，但其增長十分迅速：根據研究機構高德納(Gartner)的數據，今年中國在公共雲計算服務方面的總支出預計將從2016年的112億美元增至142億美元——相當於美國2017年預計支出總額（1410億美元）的十分之一。

Services, too, have evolved, from data storage into what Alibaba chief scientist Jingren Zhou dubs a “highly centralised information management system”, handling everything from staff payroll to security.

雲服務的範疇也已從數據存儲擴展爲阿里雲首席科學家周靖人所稱的“高度集中的信息管理系統”，可以處理從員工薪酬到安全的各種業務。

“The potential for Alibaba on cloud is the same as AWS,” says Elinor Leung, who heads up Asia internet research at CLSA. “It’s about scale and technology. The bigger you are, the less costs you pass on to the customer. You basically kill all the little guys.”

里昂證券(CLSA)主管亞洲互聯網研究的樑向奕(Elinor Leung)表示：“阿里巴巴在雲領域的潛力與AWS一樣大。核心是規模和技術。規模越大，轉嫁給客戶的成本就越少，基本上就能消滅一切小角色。”

Killing the small fry can be expensive, as Alibaba, and AWS before it, knows. According to Ms Leung, AWS has cut the prices it charges a total of 52 times since its launch, and its rates are now half those charged by smaller competitors, leaving it and Microsoft dominant in the field of IT storage and services.

殺死小魚小蝦可能要付出很大代價，阿里巴巴、還有AWS都知道這一點。樑向奕表示，AWS自推出以來總共降價了52次，目前其收費只有較小競爭對手的一半，這讓它和微軟(Microsoft)在IT存儲與服務領域佔據着主導地位。

Likewise, Alibaba halved its core product prices in October. In the latest quarter, it lost $5 for every $100 of revenues generated. And exponential growth does not last for ever — Amazon’s AWS sales growth decelerated, to 47 per cent in its latest quarter.

去年10月阿里巴巴同樣將其核心產品的價格降了一半。在最近一個季度，其業務每產生100美元營收就要虧損5美元。此外，指數式增長的勢頭也不會永遠持續下去，比如亞馬遜AWS在最新季度的銷售額增速已降至47%。

That does little to damp bullish spirits. “Cloud is a huge deal,” says Marin Ivezic, partner at PwC in Hong Kong, pointing to the interdependency between “big data” and cloud computing.

這絲毫無損樂觀情緒。普華永道(PwC)駐香港合夥人馬林?伊韋齊奇(Marin Ivezic)表示：“雲是大生意。”他指出，“大數據”和雲計算之間是相互依存的關係。

As more data are generated outside the office or home — from sensors, for example, or the internet of things — so the demand for cloud hosting will grow, he adds. “The value is in the ability to analyse data generated by devices.”

他還表示，隨着在辦公室或家庭以外地方產生的數據——比如通過傳感器或物聯網——增多，對雲端主機的需求也會增長。“對各種設備產生的數據進行分析的能力是價值所在。”

However, the earlier incarnations of the cloud as one big global repository are morphing into more localised centres, partly to meet regulatory requirements and partly because of different demands.

早先的雲好比大型的全球性數據貯藏室，如今則轉變爲更局地性的數據中心，這部分是爲了滿足監管要求，部分是因爲存在多種多樣的需求。

Ethan Sicheng Yu, general manager of Alibaba Cloud’s overseas business, explains: “Our goal is maybe in a few years to establish noticeable market share and to learn local market requirements, because we firmly believe globalisation does not mean you standardise your products everywhere.”

阿里雲國際業務總經理喻思成解釋說：“我們的目標是若干年後佔有令人矚目的市場份額，並瞭解當地市場的要求，因爲我們堅信全球化並不意味着要將產品在所有地方都標準化。”

Robert Xu, chairman at Kingdee in Shenzhen, an early adopter of cloud technology and now provider of cloud-based services to hundreds of millions of small and medium sized enterprises, concurs.

深圳的金蝶(Kingdee)是最早應用雲技術的公司之一，目前爲數百萬的中小企業提供各種基於雲的服務。該公司的董事長徐少春(Robert Xu)也抱着同樣的看法。

“Big data used to be idle in the old era,” he says. “But since we moved to cloud services in the past two years, we have been able to use it in better ways and provide more value to customers.” Those ways include better targeted marketing and using financial data to help secure loans, a perennial headache for SMEs in China.

徐少春說：“過去大數據往往被閒置，不過自從這兩年我們轉向雲服務以來，我們已經能夠以更好的方式使用大數據，爲客戶創造更多價值。”這些方式包括效果更佳的定向營銷，以及利用財務數據幫助企業獲得貸款——這在中國是中小企業長期以來的一大難題。

SMEs provide fertile ground for providers of cloud services in other ways. Mr Xu refers to a “megatrend” driven by both the natural IT renewal cycle (which this time will see businesses move from local servers to the cloud) and China’s changing economy.

中小企業也在其他方面爲雲服務企業提供了肥沃的土壤。徐少春談到在IT自然更新週期（這一次我們將看到企業從本地服務器轉移到雲端）和中國不斷變化的經濟推動下出現的一個“大趨勢”。

“The economy is transforming rapidly in China and companies need to maintain their advantage in better management and better efficiency,” he says. “This is a natural way for them to better survive in the new economy.”

他說：“中國經濟正在快速變化，企業需要以更好的管理和更高的效率維持自身優勢。這是它們提高在新經濟下的生存能力的自然方式。”

Like the international cloud titans, Kingdee is also looking to bring artificial intelligence to bear in the sphere of big data analytics and other SME services, including alerting them when budget ceilings are about to be hit.

與國際上的雲巨頭類似，金蝶也在尋求將人工智能引入大數據分析及其他中小企業服務領域，包括在企業觸及預算上限前提醒它們。

But SMEs are not the only customers. China also boasts a digital generation which has never used a PC or downloaded files to a USB or hard drive, says Chris Ip, a senior partner at McKinsey’s Asia-Pacific digital practice.

不過，中小企業並不是唯一的客戶。麥肯錫(McKinsey)亞太區數字化業務資深合夥人葉遠揚(Chris Ip)表示，中國擁有數字化的一代，這代人從未用過個人電腦或將文件下載至U盤或硬盤。

“Consumers are leading digital lifestyles. Everyone has a collection of photos, social media history and hoard of electronic files on record. Bank statements and emails, they need to be stored as well.”

“客戶們如今過着數字化的生活方式，每個人都有許多相片、社交媒體歷史紀錄及大量的電子文件，還有銀行通知和電子郵件也同樣需要保存下來。”

Using consumer data generated in China also has the advantage of being cleaner — there is less multiple phone ownership — than is the case in other countries, says Mr Ip, which means marketing and other campaigns are better targeted. Mobile phones have to be registered, and about 99 per cent of Sim cards are linked to national IDs.

葉遠揚表示，使用在中國生成的客戶數據還有一個優勢，就是比其他國家產生的數據“乾淨”——在中國一個人擁有多部手機的情況要少一些。這種優勢使得開展營銷及其他活動更有針對性。中國要求手機用戶實名登記，大約99%的SIM卡是與身份證號碼相聯繫的。

“Digital companies are desperate to attract consumers, but also to engage them,” he says. “If you provide that, in a way that is subsidised or free, that’s a killer app that encourages people to come back to your platform rather than someone else’s platform.”

他說：“數字化企業不僅極力想要吸引客戶，還想粘住他們。如果一款應用能以有補貼或免費的方式提供服務，就有望成爲殺手級應用，鼓勵人們重返你的平臺而不是轉移到別人的平臺。”

Hence Alibaba’s rivals Baidu and Tencent — together the trio make up China’s internet trinity collectively known as BAT — all offer cloud services. Other China providers include Huawei and China Telecom.

因此，阿里巴巴的對手百度(Baidu)和騰訊(Tencent)也都在提供雲服務——這三家企業組成中國互聯網行業的三巨頭，合稱BAT。除它們以外，其他中國雲服務提供商還包括華爲(Huawei)和中國電信(China Telecom)。

AWS is present through a joint venture with Beijing Sinnet Technology, which owns and operates the data centres, while Microsoft Azure offers services that are operated by 21Vianet. Tencent, China’s third biggest vendor according to the IDC consultancy, works with partners to operate centres in Asia, the Americas and Europe.

AWS通過與北京光環新網(Beijing Sinnet Technology)的合資公司在中國提供服務，後者擁有並運營數據中心。微軟Azure提供由世紀互聯(21Vianet)運營的雲服務。騰訊則與多個合作伙伴攜手，運營設在亞洲、美洲和歐洲的數據中心——根據諮詢公司IDC的統計，騰訊是中國第三大雲服務供應商。

Chinese players are also developing facilities offshore. The consultancy Bain & Co notes in a report, pointing to some of these facilities — including AliCloud’s US data centres — that these “indicate that they may be looking at the market with globalisation in mind”.

中國雲服務供應商也在海外建設基礎設施。貝恩諮詢公司(Bain & Co)在一份報告中提到了一些例子，包括阿里雲在美國的數據中心，並表示這些海外設施“表明它們也許在以全球性眼光看待市場”。

Alibaba, says Ms Leung, wants to join its more established multinational peers as part of the “3A” (Alibaba, AWS, Azure) group. But, for all the drivers, she cautions that the jury is out as to its success. “It wants to be top three. Currently people have doubts about China’s cloud.”

樑向奕表示，阿里巴巴希望與更老牌的跨國同行並駕齊驅，成爲“3A”（Alibaba、AWS、Azure）集團的一分子。但她提醒說，儘管存在種種有利因素，阿里巴巴能否成功還說不準。“它希望成爲業內前三。就目前來說，人們對中國的雲技術是抱有疑慮的。”

Mr Yu has no such qualms. The race between the 3As, he says, has just started. “I think the market is out there. It’s for us to lose. It’s really technology that will differentiate the final winner and I think we have a long way to go”

喻思成完全沒有這種顧慮。他說，“3A”之間的競爭纔剛剛開始。“我想市場就在那裏，勝負取決於我們自己。真正能夠決出最終贏家的是技術。我想我們有很長的路要走。”