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Alibaba Cloud CEO Hu Xiaoming (also known as Sun Quan) once revealed his business secret in a media interview, saying that he would always remember two phrases: “Expand business boundaries” and “business drives technological progress”.
This can be regarded as a true portrayal of Ali. Indeed, the way for an enterprise to settle down is not only the technology in the laboratory, but also to make the technology generate commercial value, form a virtuous circle, and seek benefits for the whole industrial chain and even the ecological circle. However, when it comes to the seamless combination of technology and business, Ali is a typical enterprise, such as Ali Ecology, ant ecology, rookie ecology, are the epitome of this model; In the 2018 Guangdong Cloud Conference, we saw the logic behind the introduction of technology into business.
The necessity of industrial development
Industrial Internet is a platitude topic, China as one of the global manufacturing base, talk more urgent. The reason is that Chinese manufacturers are suffering from overcapacity and rising costs at home and rising labor, land and energy costs at home. Chen Yongzheng, former chairman of Foxconn Industrial Internet, told CyberStory in an exclusive interview that “Chinese manufacturing can no longer be low-end manufacturing. It can’t be a human-dependent industry. It has to go to the core, to be able to be automated, intelligent and high-quality. This is a problem that all manufacturing industries, no matter big or small, will encounter.” What’s more, “90% of the equipment in Chinese factories is disconnected.” Ali Cloud CEO Hu Xiaoming also mentioned at the scene that all the sensors on the equipment are used for production, but they are not connected to the Internet.
Therefore, Hu Xiaoming believes that the intelligent transformation of factories, the intelligent connection between factories and supply chains, and the connection between manufacturing and consumption end are the three key points to realize new manufacturing. But no matter which link, all need industrial Internet as the hub, gather and get through all kinds of data — from all the machines and equipment inside the factory, to the data of the production line; Data from factories to supply chains (e.g. financial platforms, logistics platforms); From factory production to consumer data — so the industrial Internet is the most important infrastructure for new manufacturing. To put it bluntly, we can think of the industrial Internet as a cycle between machines, data, system networks and people.
Of course, the industrial Internet is not short of players, from information and communication technology companies, to the Internet cloud companies, and then to industrial technology companies, are involved. For example, domestic pioneers such as Haier, Aerospace Science and Industry, Sany Heavy Industry, Dongtu Technology, hollysys, etc., and foreign companies such as GE and Siemens are typical representatives. Their technologies and solutions are mature and extensive, which are applied to manufacturing, urban management, medical treatment and many other fields. There are more than 150 industrial Internet platforms in the world.
The point is that the industrial Internet is a vibrant frontier for the first consumer Internet natives, including Alibaba.
The accident of technological development
Aliyun is no stranger to bringing Internet technology to manufacturing. In March 2015, xiao-ming hu had mentioned, in boao Asia BBS “alibaba early judgment of industry will be the future trend of the development of the Internet, new technologies such as cloud computing can bring huge growth opportunities to the industry, and will become the economic transformation of the breaking point, and for the arrival of this day for six years of technology deployment.” At the 2018 Hangzhou Cloud Conference, Jack Ma also proposed that “the core of new manufacturing is data, and new manufacturing is the perfect combination of manufacturing and service industry”.
Similarly, “more than two years ago, when all the real economy and virtual economy debate, ali cloud engineers to see the most potential in the real economy, the most challenging places: special dense data, lack of intelligent special”, ali cloud machine intelligence chief scientist MinWanLi scene memory, more and more cameras in the sky, but the road more and plugging; More and more data, slower and slower. ‘All the data is lost, not to mention the tricks of data generation, because there is no cloud computing, big data to wake them up,’ he said.
Through the above three points of view, it is not difficult to extract several key elements of the industrial Internet: data, technology (including cloud computing, big data, Internet, AI, etc.), industry, developers behind, and these key capabilities are repeatedly mentioned by Ali, like a weapon, easy to grasp.
1. Talk about “data” first. Big data is just like the invention of “black gunpowder” in the early 9th century, which is just eye-catching fireworks before it is put into the proper field. Once big data is applied to the industrial field, it is just like gunpowder used in guns and guns in the 14th century, releasing huge energy and bringing industrial revolution.
Developer story vs. technology platform. (This was also the focus of the conference.)
In view of industrial Internet field, Ali uses a killer trump card — “flying dragon industrial Internet platform”. To facilitate understanding, here is an excerpt from alibaba’s official introduction:
“Internet platform based on ali cloud dragon industry leading cloud computing, the IoT, artificial intelligence, such as technology, get through the information system of manufacturing enterprises, using industrial IoT comb manufacturing enterprises for research all link data, production and sales in the cloud to build industrial big data platform, and through the ali cloud ET industrial brain data processing and analysis, optimize the manufacturing process, Bring commercial value.”
Figure: Analysis of “Feilong Industrial Internet Platform” architecture. The bottom layer is the industrial IoT base: through the edge computing of massive heterogeneous data and the Internet of Things platform, it collects all kinds of factory facilities, such as automation systems, instruments and meters, CNC machine tools, engineering machinery, textile equipment and other whole-domain data, and builds an industrial big data platform on the cloud. The middle layer is industrial ET intelligence: processing and analyzing data based on industrial intelligence algorithm + industrial knowledge model, and customizing scenes through AI creation. External feedback to the factory through the industrial SaaS system, bring specific business value; The upper layer is the application layer: including semiconductor, petrochemical, steel and metal, 3D printing, power and energy and other industry applications.
“Flying dragon” behind, Hu Xiaoming stressed ali Cloud industrial Internet three core capabilities. First, industrial Internet of Things services, to achieve cloud edge and end integration management, serving textile and clothing, electronic manufacturing, mechanical processing and other industries; Second, industrial data intelligent service, realize intelligent analysis and application of industrial data, serving dozens of industries such as photovoltaic, rubber, chemical, electric power; Third, industrial APP operation services, helping software developers and system integrators to achieve one-stop industrial APP development, integration, hosting, operation and maintenance.
However, any black technology today that can’t be written into a formula has a hollow value proposition. A formula is a journey from zero to one.
For example, in order to write the formula “industrial Internet”, Ali’s engineers/developers went to the workshop and refined a platform of industrial brain (ET industrial Brain). In this cloud conference, several spokesmen of Ali Cloud described how developers went into factories, got along with the internal staff of enterprises, got familiar with the secrets and developed the technology suitable for the industrial chain.
Figure: Parsing ET industrial brain. Exploring the path of innovation is never accomplished overnight. Here is a small episode: In August 2016, the earliest version of ET Industrial Brain written by an Ali engineer failed to compile and run successfully. In the second stage, the engineer moved his studio to the production floor, rewrote the code, and the ET industrial brain was born. Two years ago, ET had its first case. Since then, it has improved from the starting point of 1%, 1% good rate to 5% good rate, and then to 100% open, and successfully integrated into “Flying Dragon”.
It is not difficult to foresee that with ET brain, any platform including “Feilong Industrial Internet Platform” will have technical support; There is no longer a single engineer on the platform, but all capable developers.
The trajectory of these developers’ success was described by Min as a “weapon.” When it is today a technical release weapons, grafted to the industry, with industry data, is the percentage of the value, is a set of value formula, with this formula, the new manufacture it doesn’t have to be the new production line, it doesn’t have to be a new machine, but there is a new method, new technology, new platform, even if the projection to the entire GDP in China, is unable to estimate the value of.
Photo: You may be wondering, how did the engineer finally compile it? One of his weapons is MaxCompute, developed by Alibaba Cloud — a super-scale big data computing service platform created from the internal computing scene of Alibaba e-commerce data (it helped the engineer accurately find more than 60 key parameters and two key links, and realized a 1% improvement in the rate of good products). Today, MaxCompute has reached 100PB, and there are hundreds of task implementation points, which have been verified in double 11 scenarios.
MaxCompute does the following for you: MaxCompute does the following for you: MaxCompute does the following for you:
Min Wanli thus pointed out a truth: “To change the industry direction of exploration from a feasible road to a smooth road, it needs developers and group strength”.
The developers’ contribution to Aliyun is obvious. In 2009, a female engineer of Aliyun wrote down the first line of code of “Flying Sky Operating System” in an unheated office in Beijing. A pair of couplets was posted on the door of Aliyun office: “Dream is always in the spirit of The Cloud, and the code will achieve eternal foundation and sand town sea”, which inspired countless people. In 2010, China Developers Conference was held, where more than 3,000 webmasters gathered to discuss and solve the technical problems of community websites, which is also the predecessor of cloud Computing Conference. Since its establishment nine years ago, millions of developers have taken the initiative to learn, participate in development and share the benefits of cloud computing on Aliyun.
Developers are showing their unique faces in the construction of the digital era: Yu Xianyou, 82, is the oldest developer on Ali Cloud. After retirement, he developed the “family tree website” under the guidance of Ali Cloud engineers in only three days; Wes is an industrial brain engineer at ET. His first project was to go down to the rubber production workshop and use ARTIFICIAL intelligence to analyze production parameters and improve efficiency. Write down taobao’s first line of code CAI Jingxian is known as the code of the “sweeping monk”, as alibaba’s partner is still struggling in the development of the first line……
Ali Cloud also made no secret of the importance of developers. “Developers are the architects of digital civilization, and AliYun hopes to define the future of cloud computing together with millions of developers.” Ali Cloud president Hu Xiaoming scene this sentence was once brush screen. Bi Xuan, head of Alibaba Cloud Developer Center, also said, “The future of cloud computing is created jointly by cloud platforms and developers.”
Therefore, the second big release of this cloud computing conference came: “Four common” — Ali Cloud hopes to grow together, define together, participate together and share the future development of cloud computing together with developers.
Photo: Alibaba and millions of developers define the future of cloud computing. “Sharing is a joy and we will continue to give back to the open source community,” Bixuan said. At present, Alibaba has joined 11 global top foundations such as Linux, CNCF and Apahce, and has accumulated more than 400 open source projects, covering middleware, development framework, database and various tool software. Alibaba is the only Chinese company to make the top contribution list on GitHub 2017.
At the same time, developers are also growing rapidly in alidepartment, including a series of activities such as Qiqi Community, Aliyun University, Tianchi Competition, etc. For example, Qiqi community has gathered more than 10,000 technical bloggers and 1 million high-quality content. Aliyun University has provided more than 4,000 teaching videos; More than 300 global technology leaders from 24 regions joined the Alibaba Cloud MVP program to help developers use cloud computing.
3. Finally, “industry”.
“Ali Cloud industrial Internet” tells us that Ali Cloud industrial Internet not only walk in China, but also walk in the world.
On the international side, we will work with German industrial enterprise Bosch to explore the localization scene of creating the next generation automatic valet parking technology in China. Partnering with Norwegian technology company Konsberg to bring energy wind power industry solutions to the Asian market; Working with Us car company Ford to optimize connected vehicles and mobility solutions for Chinese consumers; Build industrial Internet platform with Siemens…
Domestic aspect, Ali cloud industrial Internet has been born in three places. On August 24, 2018, at the Chongqing Computing Conference, Aliyun announced that it was jointly building the CcTIME Industrial Internet platform with chongqing South Bank District Government and CCID Research Institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The “CcTime” platform will access one million industrial equipment within three years, helping 4,000 manufacturing enterprises in Chongqing to achieve “intelligent manufacturing”. On November 7, 2018, supET platform led by Ali Cloud, jointly constructed by Zhejiang Central Control and Zhijiang Laboratory was awarded “World Internet leading scientific and technological achievements”. At present, more than 200 ecological participants have entered, and was selected as the first batch of national Industrial Internet innovation and development project; This year, the “flying Dragon” landed in Guangdong.
In Guangdong, Alibaba tries to integrate industrial Internet and manufacturing. “Flying Dragon” is based in Guangdong, radiates to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and helps Guangdong to build 8 industrial Internet industrial clusters such as new energy and electrical equipment. In 2017, Ali Cloud undertook the task of creating a national industrial cloud platform, the goal is to serve 100,000 manufacturing enterprises nationwide; In the same year, Ali Cloud will be the national industrial cloud headquarters in Guangzhou; This year, “Flying Dragon” was born to serve guangdong “World Factory”.
Hu Xiaoming mentioned: “Guangdong is alibaba in the whole e-commerce in the business of the most important province, Guangdong’s leading manufacturing is the world’s leading manufacturing, how we achieve industrial interconnection with Guangdong.” Hu xiaoming’s words have the numbers to prove it: In 2018, Guangdong contributed 47.6 billion yuan of the 213.5 billion Singles’ Day sales on Tmall, making guangdong the largest contributor on that day. Sales in Guangdong accounted for 22.3% of tmall’s “Double 11”, definitely among the best in China. The whole guangdong manufacturing, these enterprises are from “Made in China”, including Huawei, Honor, VIVO, OPPO, Midea and so on.
Figure: As a comprehensive industrial Internet platform, “Feilong” has been adopted by Guangdong manufacturing enterprises such as CNOOC Development co., LTD., Jingxin Communications Co., LTD., Hanlan Environment Co., LTD., And Disen Thermal Energy Co., LTD. In addition, ET Industrial Brain works with partners and developers on the platform to enable small and medium enterprises to benefit from AI technology.
Ali thus set a new “ten-year contract” with Guangdong — ten years ago, Ali helped Guangdong network goods to the north; Ten years from now, Alibaba hopes to help Guangdong develop new manufacturing models across the country.
1% fulcrum creates greater wisdom
A trend is that China’s industrial Internet core infrastructure has pressed the fast forward button. Last year, the Standing Committee of The State Council approved the “Guidance on deepening the” Internet + Advanced Manufacturing “development of industrial Internet; In June this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued “Industrial Internet development action Plan (2018-2020)” and “Industrial Internet special working group 2018 work plan” pointed out that by the end of 2020, the initial construction of industrial Internet identification analysis system, It has built about five national top sign-parsing nodes (including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing), with sign-registration volume exceeding 2 billion.
In other words, Ali industrial Internet platform is a model of the industry. Ali’s developer stories tell people at the same time, the ecology is an important part of any technology platform, like MinWanLi description “more wisdom”, he said: “when we (enterprise) went to the developers of ecology, we finally to become the fulcrum of 1%, because among the blueprint, we are just a drop in the bucket, greater wisdom comes from the developer.”
Today ali hands over this stick, with ET industrial brain as the core, delivered the industrial Internet platform, hoping that more people can relay on, redefine “industry 4.0”, define “intelligent manufacturing”, let the machine learn to think first.
Ali Cloud industrial Internet platform story, is a journey from 0 to 1, thought-provoking. The Great Wall, marathon, intelligent manufacturing, digital transformation and intelligent upgrading cannot be completed overnight by a single product. It requires continuous transmission by several generations of scientists and technicians.