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text｜you yong

editor: zhou luping

on september 5, the annual tencent global digital ecosystem conference was held as scheduled. this year, tencent cloud has identified three main channels to help enterprises grow: artificial intelligence, going global, and integrated innovation.

these are all development trends recognized by the industry, and there is also huge room for growth. however, the development of these businesses still depends on the strength of ecological partners. as a cloud vendor determined to take the product route and adopt an integrated strategy, tencent cloud is deepening its collaboration with its partners.

tencent cloud has been actively transforming for several years, and the core of its ecological strategy can be summed up in two words: stability. the stability of policies, organizations and personnel runs through it all.

at a time when tob vendors are actively improving their respective ecosystems, the outside world is also paying attention to what tencent cloud is thinking about and doing, and whether it can rely on this ecosystem to form a closed loop of tob services.

01

stability is the cornerstone of building an ecosystem

in the past six months, yang chen, vice president of tencent cloud and head of industry ecosystem cooperation business, has found that many partners outside the tencent cloud system have begun to approach him to discuss business cooperation, and this situation has increased a lot more than in previous years.

one type is the public cloud channel partners of other companies. on the one hand, it is due to the trend of multi-cloud strategy of enterprise customers, and on the other hand, these agents hope to participate in the ecosystem of multiple manufacturers to expand the scale of operation while also dispersing risks. there are also partners who used to work in traditional offline markets or foreign companies. after seeing the product advantages of tencent cloud in niche areas such as audio and video, and databases, they have begun to actively embrace it.

"the core still goes back to the essence. tencent has given half of its life to its partners and attaches more importance to the healthy operation and sustainable development of the ecosystem," said yang chen.

in the outside world's impression, although tencent announces some new expansion tracks at its annual digital ecosystem conference, there are rarely many new concepts and major adjustments in policy directions in ecosystem construction, so it is difficult for the outside world to remember any profound changes.

yang chen received the most feedback from partners on channel policies, and the core is two words: stability. "we hope that channel policies will be like traditional chinese medicine conditioning, under the premise of stability and predictability, how to ensure that we can make steady progress. this is a kind of gradual optimization." yang chen said.

in the past few years, tencent cloud's ecological policies, organization, and personnel have not undergone major adjustments, maintaining relative stability and consistency.

this is also what impressed huayu jiaye ceo chai yifei the most. huayu jiaye started cooperating with tencent cloud as early as 2017. both parties have experienced a process from scratch, from business rookies to common growth.

in the past seven years, huayu jiaye's revenue has increased a hundredfold. but in chai yifei's words, tencent cloud's basic policies have basically not changed much in the past seven years, and only made some short-term adjustments to address differences in some markets and needs. "this gives partners great confidence."

stability may seem like a common-sense business practice, but it is crucial in building an ecosystem: for partners, clear and stable rules that do not change at will mean predictable income, which makes them more confident in investing and more willing to stay with the company for a long time.

"with the stability of your policies, i dare to invest. partners can clearly calculate the input-output ratio, and then formulate long-term strategic plans for the company. they know how to invest, how to deploy my personnel, and how to readjust my structure to tencent's rhythm." chai yifei said that building an ecosystem requires giving partners a sense of security.

moreover, tencent cloud’s cooperative attitude also made him feel comfortable. “they are standing on a very equal perspective to discuss what should be done next, what plans there are, and finally form a reasonable solution,” chai yifei said.

this style of doing things is indeed very tencent. in the past 10 to 20 years, there have been few drastic changes in the company, from business to senior management. tencent group's main channel is also extremely stable, and it has maintained steady growth over the years. this also allows tencent group to have sufficient patience to invest in product development and customer satisfaction in its cloud business.

"tencent cloud does not need to rush to make a living today, which means we will not take some radical approaches," said li qiang, vice president of tencent group and president of government business. "we rarely introduce policies that will impact our partners. instead, we support our partners more in expanding the market." for example, tencent cloud cut a large number of integration, delivery, consulting, and customized development businesses and handed them over to its partners.

some time ago, a fierce price war broke out in the cloud market. however, tencent cloud did not actively follow up because they found that the price war in the cloud market had little impact on the top customers, who already had bargaining power. the real impact was on the mid- and long-tail customers, but due to migration costs, the price cut did not cause a large-scale outflow of customers. instead, it caused de-channelization, and more and more customers who originally purchased products in channels began to purchase on the official website, which had a great impact on ecological partners.

an insider of tencent cloud told digital frontier that tencent cloud's dependence on partners is becoming increasingly higher. whether it is the development of sinking markets or the coverage of traditional industries, "we really can't do it without partners."

currently, the revenue contributed by partners accounts for more than one-third of tencent cloud's total revenue.the overall growth rate of partners' public cloud is 150% of the overall market growth rate. in the past three years, the number of partners with revenue exceeding one million has increased by 150%.at the same time, tencent cloud is also gradually sorting out its customer stratification system, clarifying the boundaries and rules of cooperation with partners, and providing partners with a broader market.

"we have shifted our focus to how to empower them, how to provide them with better training, and how to help partners better understand our products." tencent senior executive vice president and ceo of cloud and smart industries group tang daosheng told digital frontier that tencent cloud now provides partners with a higher level of service support, which is very different from the past. for example, tencent cloud's operation management system is designed specifically for partners to provide them with systematic support, including personnel training, certification, etc.

"tencent's very stable business strategy in recent years has actually strengthened the confidence of many partners. looking back today, the double-digit growth of our partners' businesses is closely related to this," said tang daosheng.

02

how can partners adapt their capabilities to new market demands?

the number of tencent cloud partners has grown to 11,000, including channel resale partners, delivery partners, consulting partners, isv partners, etc., and the types are very rich.

but now the demand in the cloud market has changed. for example, the traditional internet market has become saturated. they are cloud-native customers. as for a large number of offline industry customers, there are still great opportunities. however, the prerequisite for serving these customers is to fully understand the industry know-how. it is not just a resale role. it may also be necessary to provide complete services and industry solutions such as consulting, delivery and implementation.

for example, in addition to the basic needs of iaas, customers also have many needs for paas and saas products, and the latter two have higher customer stickiness. in addition, the vast majority of current cloud customers are still concentrated in first-tier and second-tier cities, but there is still a wide space in the sinking market that has not been covered.

this also means that the roles played by ecological partners need to change and their capabilities need to be upgraded.

after years of hard work with ecological partners, tencent cloud vice president wu qisheng said that the future development strategy of tencent cloud ecology will be to give equal importance to online and offline markets.

the online public cloud is already quite large, but it belongs to the stock market. next, tencent cloud's strategy will be to customize different product combinations for customers' scenarios and serve customers in the form of packages, including providing one-click deployment tools, such as adding some tencent cloud's self-developed paas and saas products to small and medium-sized enterprises with low performance requirements, to help customers go to the cloud with zero threshold.

iaas is like selling a rough house, without much added value, and customers have low stickiness, are price sensitive, and can move away at any time. paas and saas products are like a fully decorated house, even with smart home appliances. from the perspective of long-term business customers, many partners are also willing to actively seek differentiation. huayu jiaye currently plans to explore new tracks and sell more saas products, including wechat enterprise, tencent conference, e-signature, etc., as well as tencent's self-developed paas products such as databases.

in addition, in the online market, tencent cloud also encourages partners to explore the third- and fourth-tier cities, as these long-tail users are more dependent on ecosystem partners to cover them. previously, a partner of tencent cloud was able to serve nearly 200,000 customers in the lower-tier markets through telemarketing. unlike large customers with a value of hundreds of millions, the average customer price of these long-tail customers is only a few thousand to tens of thousands of yuan per year, but their profitability may be much higher than the gross profit of the head customers.

the offline market is more driven by the need for convergence and innovation. tencent cloud will use its vast agent channel system this year to promote products related to convergence and innovation on a large scale, such as database tdsql, operating system tencentos, proprietary cloud tce, big data tbds and ti platform.

at present, these products have passed the evaluation and certification of relevant national departments. for example, the database has been selected into the list of overall solutions for information innovation of the ministry of industry and information technology, and has been widely used by many financial clients and government and enterprise clients.

yang chen revealed that in order to deepen the integration and innovation market with partners, tencent cloud will comprehensively upgrade its distribution channel system and develop a group of professional partners with experience in private product sales and services.

currently, tencent cloud is also trialing the msp service provider certification system. while fully opening the service market to partners, it helps partners build more professional service teams, capabilities and tools, allowing partners who previously could only do resale business to transform and provide enterprises with comprehensive services including business consulting, architecture design, and personal operation and maintenance, thereby enhancing service value.

this is also in line with the "trinity" concept of industry, region, and ecology proposed by tencent cloud. serving the top customers in the industry is essentially about understanding and experience in the industry, and is also the key to truly entering this market. for example, tencent cloud recently reached a strategic cooperation with more than 30 top partners in the subdivided industries to jointly launch industry solutions. these contents can be reused in regions and ecosystems, helping them to promote to more mid-level and mid-to-long-tail customers in the same industry.

this year, tencent cloud has also set a new goal for its own ecosystem - "hundreds, thousands and millions". it has 100 new track partners, mainly focusing on integrated innovation, chinese companies' overseas expansion, intelligence, etc., to jointly expand the market and build sales and service capabilities; 1,000 regional market partners and supporting partners to train 10,000 business experts.

however, wu qisheng believes that quantity is not the only indicator of ecological prosperity, and the quality of the ecosystem is relatively more important. "it is possible that 11,000 will become 8,000, or 15,000. the core logic is to allow partners to make money here and help our business grow together."

03

reject involution and lead partners to explore new tracks

the cloud market has been in a state of growth anxiety in recent years, which has led to a price war. how to find new growth points with partners is also a common problem faced by everyone.

in fact, the cloud market has been in a state of rise and fall. for example, the real estate industry is not doing well, but the property industry is growing rapidly; the traditional manufacturing industry has been hit hard, but the high-end manufacturing industry represented by chips and new energy is thriving; traditional fossil energy has been affected, but the growth rate of clean energy has been relatively fast in recent years.

this year, tencent cloud has also identified three new tracks to help companies grow, and ecosystem construction is also being carried out around these tracks.

first, artificial intelligence。the booming development of large models has brought about a huge demand for intelligent computing power.and the rapid growth of a series of products related to supporting large model training.“it has become one of the important growth engines for cloud computing vendors over the past period of time.” although tencent cloud did not disclose the specific proportion of revenue related to large models in the entire tencent cloud, tang daosheng revealed that the growth rate of ai is very fast.

second, go out to seamore and more customers are going overseas to conduct business, which also promotes the overseas expansion of cloud computing business. however, the overseas expansion model has changed. in the past, products were directly exported, but now it has become necessary to build factories overseas, establish local supply chains, and recruit local employees.

there are two difficulties behind this transformation: first, when building a factory locally, how to quickly build a digital platform and completely replicate the domestic management model. the refined management experience of the domestic manufacturing industry is exported overseas. second, it is necessary to comply with regulations and meet local regulatory requirements for data storage, and to perform unified scheduling and management through the cloud and quickly expand capacity.

for example, when midea built a factory in brazil, tencent cloud used cdc technology to help midea quickly build a digital operation platform, which not only supported the rapid expansion of business, but also supported midea group to dispatch global resources through the cloud. currently, tencent cloud's infrastructure has spread across 21 regions around the world, operating 58 availability zones and more than 3,200 global acceleration nodes.

the third is integrated innovation. the government and central state-owned enterprise customers have more and more requirements for localization and independence, which has further driven the market demand for integrated innovation.

"the pace of converged innovation has been accelerating since the second half of last year," said li qiang. the biggest challenge for the converged innovation ecosystem is adaptation, which requires a completely new software and hardware ecosystem that can adapt to a variety of different software and hardware environments.

the development of these new growth tracks naturally requires the cooperation of partners.

for example, in the ai ​​ecosystem, tencent cloud has jointly released more than 20 industry models with customers and partners, covering more than 50 industries. since 2023, relying on leading and rich generative ai products, tencent cloud and 1,500 partners have served more than 20,000 customers in total, and have initially built an ecosystem around generative ai products. in may of this year, tencent cloud, together with 17 partners, released a generative ai ecosystem plan. in this ecosystem, tencent cloud provides technology and platform foundations, and works with partners to find scenarios and create industry applications for ai.

in terms of the overseas ecosystem, tencent cloud established the overseas ecological alliance in 2022. at this year's global digital ecosystem conference, tencent cloud also released seven overseas industry scenario solutions co-created with partners, including the most popular cross-border e-commerce, game social networking, consumer electronics, etc.

however, the overseas environment is very complex. for example, the data privacy and compliance policies in each place are very different. in addition, most overseas deliveries need to be localized. some deliveries must be made by local employees. domestic business trips are not allowed, and work visas are required. if you are not careful, you may violate local laws and regulations.

therefore, in addition to providing products for overseas customers, tencent cloud is also helping partners to quickly understand the situation in local markets. not long ago, tencent cloud launched the "nanshan academy" program, which is mostly attended by ceos of core partners. last month, it also went to singapore to invite the general manager of tencent's overseas department for face-to-face communication, and invited some successful overseas customers to come and share their experiences.

tencent cloud hopes to establish a localized service system and localized service partners. however, wu qisheng also admitted that this is a gradual process of establishment, and the overseas ecosystem is still in a relatively early stage.

in the integrated innovation ecosystem, tencent cloud also announced the formal establishment of the "integrated innovation open alliance" to carry out joint adaptation, joint expansion and joint innovation with more partners, promote the integration of joint solutions and products, and create a benchmark case for integrated innovation.

at present, tencent cloud has nearly 100 products that integrate innovative knowledge graphs, with more than 1,400 mutual certifications, and has been fully adapted to the mainstream domestic software and hardware ecosystem.

tencent cloud has mainly gathered three types of partners in its integrated innovation ecosystem. the first is partners with state-owned capital backgrounds. the second is partners with a lot of accumulation in traditional offline business, such as oracle, vmware and other larger partners in the system. they have a deep understanding of customers' core business systems and are very clear about how to iterate offline systems into integrated innovation ecosystems. the third is the leading isvs in each industry, who integrate tencent cloud's software products into their applications.

it is not difficult to find that behind the main tracks that tencent cloud has entered, there is deep participation of partners, and the success of these partners will further drive the prosperity of the tencent cloud industry ecosystem and jointly realize the closed loop of tob services.