Top of the big era

Cloud computing seems very high-end and out of reach for ordinary people. I don’t know what it is.

In fact, it’s not that complicated at all. It’s often caused by “industry slang”.

Just like many bandits' slang, "Lahu", "Golden Gangzi", "Bingjianzi", etc., which may sound powerful at first, are actually the simplest meanings.

It is a mechanism formed within the industry to distinguish itself from outsiders.

People inside can understand it, but outsiders can’t.

The computer industry is similar, with many similar special terms. If a person can open his mouth and speak these internal words extremely skillfully, it becomes a kind of screening. To the industry, they are "one of their own."

Therefore, some professional scammers will appear in all walks of life based on this habit.

They are proficient in all kinds of terminology and speak it in a brilliant way. I wrote my own fake resume and used all kinds of confusing big words during the interview, and then I fooled many HR, vice presidents and even big bosses.

Then I got hired.

Just like HR asks "The king of heaven covers the tigers on the earth", you answer "The pagoda suppresses the river demon".

Answer correctly and hit it off right away.

In his previous life, Dr. Wang Jian worked on Alibaba Cloud at Alibaba, and was once widely considered to be a liar in this industry. Dr. Wang Jian is certainly not a liar, but another musician surnamed Gao mistook Boss Ma and then became a top executive of Alibaba Entertainment. He really gave Alibaba a hard time.

Zhou Buqi has been in the industry for so long that he already has a basic understanding of these terms in the computer industry.

What is a cloud native database?

When this product was born, it appeared as a cloud database, instead of being a local database like Oracle database. Later, when the cloud era came, it transformed to the cloud.

What is a cloud database?

It is a database applied on a cloud computing platform.

What is a database?

This is the most typical industry terminology, and it is really difficult for ordinary people to understand it. To put it bluntly, it is the most common ledger around.

How to manage a huge warehouse full of goods?

It would be too complicated to manage the goods directly.

The simplest way is to keep accounts.

When purchasing goods, register each product in a register, with price, quantity, quality, shelf life, and location in the warehouse clearly marked.

In this way, management will be convenient.

When you need to ship goods, you only need to find the ledger, match the price and quantity based on the information recorded in the ledger, and then go directly to the storage location to pull the goods based on the recorded address.

After shipment, enter new information.

From physical management to information management, work efficiency can be greatly improved.

Just like Netflix.

As a streaming video platform, Netflix has too much film and television content. The volume is too large and cannot be stored in its own servers. What should I do?

Or spend a lot of money to buy a new server, which is too expensive.

Either use Ziwei Cloud to rent a server on the cloud computing platform and store huge amounts of content in the cloud, which is more convenient and cheaper.

If Netflix stores 1,000TB of content, how does it need to manage such a huge amount of data?

In the same way, we should point physical objects to information and do information management.

For a 3GB movie, the registered information may be only 1KB in size.

In other words, just processing and managing 1KB of information is equivalent to managing 3GB of content, which will greatly reduce management costs.

The "ledger" used for this kind of information management is called a database.

The "ledger" on the cloud computing platform is called a cloud database.

The "ledger" specially developed for cloud computing platforms is called cloud native database.

It can be seen that the cloud database will be the most important and indispensable product of the Ziwei Cloud platform. Any company that wants to store data content on the Ziwei Cloud platform needs to manage the data through the cloud database.

This is a necessity.

Not only does it mean making a lot of money, it also plays an extremely important strategic role.

At this level, Kurian has a clearer perspective than the heads of the domestic cloud computing team, saying: "There is a concept in economics called the prisoner's dilemma..."

"Well, China's Internet is more determined on this path than Silicon Valley!"

Of course Zhou Buqi knew this.

Nothing new.

The so-called prisoner's dilemma means that when the cost price of a product is 10 yuan, if it is initially priced at 15 yuan, it seems that you have made 5 yuan, which is a good business.

In fact, otherwise, such high profits will cause fierce competition in the market, and then a price war will begin until the price is lower than the cost price, and everyone will be finished together.

In order to cope with this vicious competition, many smart businessmen simply destroyed themselves. Things with a cost of 10 yuan were only sold in the market for 10.5 yuan.

Competitors will see that it is unprofitable and will not participate.

You can make a fortune silently.

Many domestic products have high domestic prices and low foreign prices. There are various reasons for this phenomenon. One of the very important policy directions is that selling goods abroad at low prices can put foreign markets into a "prisoner's dilemma".

If the domestic market price is high, profits will be high, there will be many competitors, and the market will be active, which can provide more job opportunities and create more GDP.

But in the Internet era, the situation has changed.

The new generation of young entrepreneurs all grew up under the influence of Western individualistic culture, and often listen to the instructions but not the propaganda. For the sake of their own success, they don't care about the life and death of the industry and are desperately trying to lower prices.

Even Xiaomi phones are still selling at a loss.

Kurian said solemnly: "Both Ziwei Cloud and Amazon Cloud are now adopting similar business strategies, small profits but quick turnover. They use low prices to attract customers without attracting the attention of other giants in the industry. When the business scales up, Once large-scale profits appear, competitors will take notice of the benefits, and the market structure has been set, and it’s already too late.”

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "Yes, Ziwei Cloud and Amazon Cloud are able to achieve today's status because of this idea. Taking the initiative to minimize profits may seem like destroying one's own financial path, but in fact it is destroying the financial path of others. . Behind this is the dividend of first-mover advantage shared by the Internet industry."

Kurian said: "So Ziweiyun's cloud database must become the world's first cloud-native database!"

"There is no need to state it from this angle." Zhou Buqi heard that he was still trying to persuade him, so he took the initiative to express his position, "I have been convinced by you. I will think about it for two days, and there is a high probability that I will support you."

Kurian was not very satisfied and couldn't afford to waste two days, so he continued to fight: "Next, I will reduce the price of Ziweiyun."

Zhou Buqi supported, "You decide."

Kurian explained, “This is mainly determined by the price of hardware costs. Affected by Moore’s Law, the prices of servers and processors will become lower and lower. Under the effect of scale, costs will be further reduced. As long as prices are reduced The amplitude is smaller than the decrease in cost, and the more you sell, the more you will earn.”

Zhou Buqi said with deep approval: "Zi Weiyun started working early, which is our huge advantage. No matter what, we must firmly seize this first-mover advantage and maintain it continuously." ."

Kurian continued: "So the cloud database product is the top priority and is the key for Ziweiyun to maintain this first-mover advantage."

"Low price?"

"Low price is of course a strategy. Cloud databases have better economies of scale, and the cost is only 10% of commercial databases. In other words, even if our database price is only 20% of Oracle databases, our profit margin is theirs 200%. However, this is a business aspect, and there is a more important strategic significance."

Zhou Buqi asked: "What is it?"

Kurian said eloquently: "Cloud database can establish a strong binding relationship between the platform and users."

"Um."

Zhou Buqi didn't feel too surprised.

Kurian said: "In the current cloud server rental market, Ziweiyun's market share has reached 49%, leading Amazon Cloud by 8 points. If we want to maintain this lead, we must ensure that users become Ziweiyun users. , you cannot quit and switch to other platforms.”

Zhou Buqi pondered and said: "The data scale is too large and migration is too difficult."

This is also the reason why he has set Ziweiyun's focus on the streaming media industry. Video platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, P Station, and YouTube all have extremely large data scales, making data migration almost impossible.

Kurian said: "Yes, this is a good idea you proposed before. However, in the long run, this is not enough. Data migration is very difficult, but it does not mean that it cannot be migrated."

“Why can’t we move?”

"Bind with our database!"

"oh?"

Zhou Buqi was somewhat surprised. He didn't expect there to be such a factor here.

No wonder Kurian is so eager and impatient. He has formulated a huge long-term strategic plan around the development of Ziweiyun.

Kurian said: "If you want to manage data, you have to go through a database. In order to improve usability, today's commercial databases are trying to be compatible with most platforms. For example, Oracle databases, users use Oracle databases to manage data locally. Go to Once on Ziweiyun's platform, you can also use Oracle to manage data, which is very convenient."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Yes."

Kurian said: "If Oracle changes its strategy and makes the Oracle database incompatible with Ziweiyun...then it will be very troublesome. Many companies will not be able to use Ziweiyun's services. The database cannot be migrated, even if the data can It makes no sense to transfer. However, this is not in line with the nature of Oracle's database third-party products."

Zhou Buqi suddenly realized, "Oracle database can't do it, but Ziwei Cloud database can! We are a self-operated native cloud database!"

Just like the iPhone.

If users want to use iMessage, they can only buy an iPhone. iMessage is a social product developed by Apple and is not made public.

Once a consumer becomes a loyal user of iMessage, it is equivalent to being bound to the iPhone, and it is no longer possible to switch to the Android camp.

Compared with relying on user experience and usage habits to guide consumers, the bond between iMessage and consumers is the real strong binding.