On October 19, 2021 Cloud Computing Conference officially opened. The conference, which has been held for many years in succession, has become a grand gathering for the domestic science and technology industry to display cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements and for industry elites to exchange cutting-edge scientific and technological ideas. The theme of this year’s conference is “Frontier, Exploration and Imagination”, including 100+ cutting-edge technology forums, 450+ domestic and foreign top scientific research institutions and digital intelligence industry manufacturers gathered in 40,000 square meters of “cloud digital Valley”, experts in various fields to create new ideas in the digital era, everyone from different perspectives, From various scientific and technological practices to elaborate their views on the whole digital world, understanding of the future digital technology.

Following the main forum in the morning, Zhang Jianfeng, president of Ali Cloud Intelligence, released the self-developed 5-nanometer CPU chip “E-Ten 710” to further promote the strategy of “deepening the foundation” of Ali Cloud, and the forum in the afternoon was followed by Xie Chunliang, general manager of business intelligence Department, who launched a business China product BizWorks. This can be seen as Ali Cloud in the “thick medium” strategy following the “cloud nail one” after another new action.

“Do deep foundation, do thick Taiwan, strengthen the ecology, do good service” is the ali cloud summit in May this year, Ali Cloud intelligent president Zhang Jianfeng first released ali Cloud on the future of the new strategic thinking.

According to BizWorks on aliyun’s official website, BizWorks is a digital transformation platform that helps customers build and operate enterprise-level business platforms efficiently and with high quality. BizWorks is an integrated digital platform of r&d and operation based on alibaba’s years of practice in Central Taiwan. The products mainly include business modeling platform, integrated application construction and operation platform, business testing and drilling platform, business operation and governance platform. BizWorks provides product capabilities that are widely applicable to scenarios where large and medium enterprises/organizations are building their business midrange and looking to achieve continuous governance of their IT assets.

According to Xie Chunliang’s presentation at the conference, some of the tools provided by BizWorks have been of great value in the delivery of more than 200 business projects in which Ali Cloud has been deeply involved in the past few years. According to statistics from previous project delivery and benchmark project cases, BizWorks has doubled the efficiency of building and delivering midstage projects and effectively improved the continuous operation of the business midstage.

What is the Central platform

The Middle Platform strategy was first proposed internally by Alibaba in 2015, aiming to build a more innovative and flexible “big middle platform and small front desk” business and enterprise architecture innovation mechanism in line with the DT era. It is also an organizational management mode that can meet the needs of enterprises in the digital era with rapid business innovation.

And the outside world first contact and perception of the concept of Zhongtai by the then Chief architect of Alibaba middleware Zhong Hua (known as Gu Qian) new book “The Transformation of enterprise IT Architecture — Alibaba Zhongtai Strategic thinking and architecture combat” first disclosed, The book introduces the shared service center business and the new enterprise architecture model of distributed servitization technology in the process of supporting Alibaba’s strategic landing in Central Taiwan.

The industry for the continuous exploration and development of Taiwan

The concept of zhongtai proposed by Ali and the new enterprise architecture model have effectively solved the pain points caused by the traditional enterprise architecture, such as data island, internal chimneys, waste caused by repeated construction of enterprise information system and low operation efficiency. At the same time, it also solves the problem of poor expansibility and maintainability brought by centralized monomone architecture through distributed servitization technology architecture mode, which leads to the great pain point that traditional technology architecture cannot support business development in the new business environment.

These pain points may not have been so painful in the past, but they have generally been magnified by the onrush of the digital age, in which digital technology needs to be placed almost as a primary factor of production in companies. The traditional enterprise architecture is not only unable to support the development of the digital age, but has become a hindrance to business development. Compared with digital native enterprises, traditional enterprises are in urgent need of new enterprise architecture methodology and new engineering methods to be implemented in digital transformation.

These big industry problems have led to a huge response from various industries in the society as soon as the concept of Ali Zhongtai architecture was put forward. Different actors in the IT industry chain began to try to understand, explore and try to build a digital medium suitable for the industry from their own perspective, which gave birth to the whole digital medium industry.

Citing some business reports, the growth momentum of China’s digital middle market has been obvious since it was first proposed, with the industry expanding rapidly. In 2018, the size of China’s digital Taiwan is 2.22 billion yuan, and the total market size of China’s Taiwan market has grown to 9.01 billion yuan in 2020. It is expected to maintain a compound annual growth rate of 60% in the next five years, and grow into a scale of nearly 100 billion yuan in 2025.

Nearly two years of early China investment industry solutions to explore domestic software vendor’s business scale and financing scale is increasing at the same time, the industry for China solution in the practical value of digital transformation of enterprises, the concept of middle breadth and dig the degree of denotation and connotation of mining, China project management maturity, middle systematic methodology of standardization and project construction, The actual landing efficiency and success rate of the Zhongtai project have been greatly improved.

A group of strategic foresight and strategic determination of early investment in the strategic construction of enterprises have begun to really harvest from the central Taiwan rich returns. According to some business reports of digital transformation, these enterprises have obvious achievements in business innovation and operational efficiency, digital pulling capacity of the organization, and the construction and production speed of new applications. The middle platform built by these enterprises has begun to play a huge value of digital support.

The development of business in Taiwan has entered a new stage

China a few years ago, ali has released data DataWorks platform product, aroused the industry data of middle construction boom, but China technology platform and tools used to build business was not altogether, resulted in the industry in the “all digital business, all data service” the digital transformation of practice has been in a state of “lame duck”. Unfortunately, all business data precipitation and analysis must eventually feed and serve the core business of the enterprise. Only through the integration of data and algorithmic capabilities into the enterprise’s existing business processes and business scenarios can the final digital value loop be formed.

Compared with data of China assets, business construction because be involved in the middle of the business scenario, the huge difference of industry business scenarios, as well as online OLTP digital business system compared with analytical OLAP systems are technically challenging determines the business middle tool platform to explore and create more challenging.

In the past six years, the industry has greatly improved its understanding of the construction of business solutions, as well as the understanding of supporting products, technologies and tools in the landing process. Once again, the industry has reached a critical point in the development of business solutions. Aliyun’s BizWorks release is a manifestation of this critical breakthrough.

In this sense, the launch of BizWorks is undoubtedly the prelude to the next and deeper phase of The development of The Central Platform! A real prologue to the efficient and high quality construction of double mid-stage through the support of tools!

Enterprise Architecture methodology in the digital age

In the mid-1990s, the International Open Standards Organization promoted TOGAF, a standard framework for Enterprise Architecture. TOGAF contains a set of processes and methods for designing, planning, implementing, and managing Enterprise information technology architectures from the top.

TOGAF divides enterprise architecture modeling into four architectural areas: business architecture, application architecture, data architecture, and technical architecture. The architectural goals for each area are shown in the following table:

In addition to the architecture artifacts, TOGAF also publishes process recommendations for implementing and migrating to this enterprise architecture:

Other have already been born nearly 30 years of time, its influence in the enterprise information construction of macro level still profound, for its strategy and strategy of the enterprise architecture value still exists, but in a distributed, cloud computing, big data, services, enterprise and so on all kinds of engineering culture, and greatly the development of the technology and tools today, How TOGAF practices modern digital enterprise architecture in the middle level requires innovation and breakthrough.

The Mid-Platform architecture proposed by Ali in 2015 and its large-scale implementation, and the mid-platform architecture scheme verified and implemented by more Internet and other leading enterprises in various industries, are undoubtedly the most reliable technical path and best practice for TOGAF’s enterprise architecture implementation in the digital era.

It can be said that the development of Zhongtai architecture no longer belongs to Ali. Although Ali’s influence in zhongtai field is still huge, the continuous evolution and gains and losses of Ali in Zhongtai are just an epitome of the exploration of Zhongtai architecture industry.

Zhongtai has condensed the wisdom of many manufacturers and industry pioneers in the industry. We start from different starting points and end up with the same path. Starting from modern engineering methods such as agile, microservices and DDD, ThoughtWorks, an internationally renowned consulting company, has also derived an enterprise architecture methodology suitable for the development of modern enterprises based on the actual needs of enterprise digital transformation, and its core is the idea of Middle-Stage. ThoughtWorks published a White Paper on Modern Enterprise Architecture earlier this year, which proposes MEAF, a Mid-Taiwan based methodology for modern enterprise architecture.

Interested can see: www.thoughtworks.com/cn/books/mo…

About the fourth generation ERP and PBC enterprise application architecture

Composable Enterprise

Facing the digital business era, Gartner, an authoritative technology trend research institution, has keenly perceived the features of “Composable Enterprise” and “Composable Commerce” of future enterprises.

The core insight is that in the digital business era, in order to win the market competition, enterprises must deliver digital business innovation faster, which determines how enterprises must continuously accumulate reusable digital assets, Build agile Composable Capabilities on “PBC Prepakcage Business Capabilities” to support the ability to quickly build new businesses. The PBC, as the basic business capability, may come from ERP manufacturers, industry ISVs, enterprises themselves and upstream and downstream links.

As business needs change, Organizations must be able to deliver innovation quickly and adapt applications dynamically — reassembling capabilities from inside and outside the enterprise. To do this, Organizations must understand and implement the “Composable enterprise.

A composable enterprise is an organization that delivers business outcomes and adapts to the pace of business change. It does this through the assembly and combination of packaged business capabilities (PBCs). PBCs are application building blocks that have been purchased or developed.

Digital commerce platforms are experiencing ongoing modularization in a cloud-native, multiexperience world. Application leaders responsible for digital commerce should prepare for a “composable” approach using packaged business capabilities to move toward future-proof digital commerce experiences.

The fourth generation of ERP

ERP, as the core business system supporting enterprises in the past information age, has sounded the horn of the evolution of post-modern ERP and the fourth generation ERP in 2020. Compared with the ERP centered on enterprise management process and solidified business suite software in the past, the fourth generation OF ERP focuses more on helping enterprises to build rapid response to business innovation and build flexible and agile enterprise-level business capabilities.

Compared with contemporary ERP, the integrated digital system, the fourth generation OF ERP, driven by AI algorithm and data, will become the core element for enterprises to win business competition, which is oriented to the ultimate experience of end users and the responsiveness to business agility.

PBC application architecture

What is PBC? According to Gartner, PBC is pre-built modular, with business semantics, reusable and extensible atomic business capabilities. Rapid assembly and choreography of PBC for business scenarios can be a super weapon for competitive success.

The new application architecture method in the Era of Composable Enterprise is PBC application architecture mode. According to Gartner’s analysis, there are many methods and modes that can be implemented, and the Enterprise application architecture mode based on mid-Stage methodology is one of the important directions. As one of PBC’s enterprise architecture implementation modes, the first Chinese application architecture has been brought into Gartner’s vision for the first time through the exploration of Chinese application architecture by domestic parties in the past.

The core of business middle stage is the modeling and structuring of enterprise business assets

The core of the MID-Stage methodology is how to structurally model reusable enterprise business assets, which includes not only the business scenarios and requirements themselves, but also the modeling and analysis process.

The modeling of most business assets in the digital era strongly depends on the structure of the associated underlying technical assets. This proposition covers business and technology, application and engineering, organization and project management, requirements engineering and analysis model, and application technology realization. There are natural complexities.

Alibaba group is established in 09 share division, in the production of more than 10 years of sharing China from generation to generation in the process of operating the business experts, product managers, technical architect, research and development of practice, trial and error, refining, upgrade, the precipitation was formed in the service of the whole ali group, the whole systematic tool platform of ecosystem.

To verify our methodology in addition to being able to adapt to complex business form, ali ali cloud related team to participate in all walks of life through constant depth of more than 200 China construction of the project, summary and refining the abstract reflection, it gradually found the machine is suitable for various industry standardization of middle business methodology and supporting platform for the tool, BizWorks is just the visible part of the iceberg on the surface of this little-known backstory.

Alibaba on the stage of practice in the business for so many years, in the end if only allow you to use a word to express the core concept in China, that is “business ability”, the business ability is the middle of the business assets conceptual expression, internal create concepts derived from several years ago translated into English and Gartner unexpectedly in the definition of PBC. Philosophically speaking, this may indicate that on the road to the real future in this world, as long as we follow the spirit and attitude of solving practical problems in a down-to-earth way, all roads lead to the same destination.

The e Business of Alibaba is built, iterated and precipitated around the flywheel of the life cycle of business capabilities. Here is alibaba’s most famous clock chart of the 12 technical features of business capabilities:

The middle stage of the business is continuous operation

What is one of the biggest misconceptions about China’s leadership over the past few years? So the first place is likely to be the “construction” out of the center.

Wrong! In fact, this is the biggest misunderstanding of The Taiwan, according to alibaba in the past 10 years of practical experience, Taiwan is not designed and constructed, Taiwan is constantly operating out. Every capability in the middle platform is not designed by a product manager or technical architect, but is constantly nurtured, iterated and precipitated in the process of daily continuous business and technical operations.

This process needs the support of powerful data operation tools and operation methodology, as well as the support of organizational tactical execution and tactical discipline. These are also two important aspects that are often ignored in the process of external enterprises’ construction in Taiwan:

In Taiwan operating tools behind the support role

Think about the following question: is your business capability visible, intuitive and clear? Are these mid-stage business capabilities easily discovered by the front line of business? How to determine the direction in which the new build and abstract mid-stage capabilities are built? What is the maturity of these capabilities? How reusable and healthy are these capabilities in China? Does the quality of service of its online operations match the attributes and importance of the front-end business? How effective is the engineering process of landing the business requirements of the front desk and middle desk? .

These problems need to be supported by operational tools.

The central stage needs strong organizational execution and tactical discipline, and needs overall governance and norms. The organizational culture behind it is indispensable

Just like before the industry’s DevOps transformation, the walls of development and operations seemed impenetrable. But there is no longer any doubt in the industry that DevOps can be achieved. Because in the development of society, the organization that is more efficient is ultimately proven by history to be the way forward. Even if there are twists and turns and restoration in the process, the historical trend is always mighty and irresistible, or it will be crushed and abandoned.

As a CORPORATE CEO, you may often wonder why every business unit does not see the elimination of duplication, integration of business capabilities, data pull through the middle platform… So obvious that the overall operational efficiency of the enterprise to improve the various lines of business vassal is blind?

This is your responsibility. What are the disruptive ideas and technologies that can be naturally implemented without any effort in the global optimization of enterprise operation efficiency through digital technology innovation? Are agile and lean engineering management ideas ok? How about distributed and microservices? Is DevOps ok?

Ali Cloud intelligent president Zhang Jianfeng said, “digital transformation is a master project”, the digital transformation requires your organization to have strategic concentration and tactical discipline and supporting cultural organization guarantee, digital transformation is so, the best path of digital transformation in Taiwan construction landing is still so.

It is not a panacea. It is not a one-shot deal. Ali has experienced the change of concept from “big middle stage, small front stage” to “thick middle stage, thin front stage”, which is the most obvious footnote of this experience in the questioning of many people who do not know the truth.

The technological explosion of the cloud native age

The future is here! But the future is so complicated! Compared to cTOS and CIOs 15 years ago, the pressures on these two roles today are greater than ever.

There is no doubt that the world is changing faster. The pace of innovation and market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and how to achieve ultra-fast business growth has become the main melody of business competition. I still remember that a few years ago, shared bikes became popular all over the country almost overnight, Didi changed our way of taxi-hailing in less than a few years, and Tencent realized the “eating chicken” in three shifts. The time it takes for a company’s valuation to go from $0 billion to $10 billion is getting shorter and shorter, but the average life span of a company has dropped from 60 years in the 1960s to 15 years today, according to STANDARD & Poor’s data. All this indicates that the speed and intensity of innovation and competition is increasing.

On the other hand, the agility and effectiveness of technical infrastructure account for an increasing proportion in the elements of business success. The transformation of cloud computing in the delivery mode of resources and services has brought about a revolutionary improvement in the efficiency of technical application and a more agile infrastructure (starting a business no longer needs to buy machines and find a computer room for hosting, From six months to prepare before the cycle to the present level of hours on the cloud to create a full range of services), and in the application architecture level, the service architecture model of flexibility, resilience, rapid syntagmatic and paradigmatic atomic services to innovation, and provided the condition for rapid business innovation and trial and error, has been more and more application platform to prove its effectiveness, technology infrastructure, more agile, It provides a foundation for business agility and competitive advantage.

Cloud native era, really is a new technology era of the big bang, according to historical experience, new technology and industry combined with need at least 3 years, but have sprung up in recent years, such as the Internet, mobile, social, cloud computing, big data, AI, 5 g, IoT, chain blocks, at least 10 kinds of technologies such as how to use the works of so many technology, used properly placed, Can it be integrated into a digital platform base to enable business development? Ctos/CIOs are under great pressure, and the integrated digital platform has become a big issue.

It can be said that in the cloud native era, Ctos/CIOs have entered both the “best of times” when technology has become the primary factor of production and the “worst of times” when it is difficult to navigate so many high-threshold technologies.

BizWorks is a new engineering platform that lowers the barriers to cloud use

BizWorks is a tool platform that helps enterprises quickly and efficiently build their business midstage. It is an efficient engineering platform in the cloud native era. Helping customers with digital transformation to lower the threshold of cloud usage is one of the core value propositions that BizWorks insists on.

conclusion

All the past, are prologue!

It has been six years since zhongtai, and all past explorations always advance to the next.

This new opening, with the launch of BizWorks, reveals that the dual mid-platform architecture, one of the best paths for digital transformation from now on, has entered a new phase supported by both tool platforms and standardized construction architecture methodology.

But make no mistake, this is only a small step forward in the long cycle of digital transformation.

In each main regime was opened by the beginning of the grand proposition of the digital economy, BizWorks product release is not even a drop in the bucket, but like all participants to take part in China exploration, we are looking for more efficient mode of enterprise architecture, from this perspective, whether various exploration success or failure, Whether standing on the shoulders of our predecessors, or by others in the future, we are participating in history, creating history, witnessing history!