For enterprises seeking digital transformation, how to manage the company's data resources, make the data generate value and effectively serve the front-end business? In 2119, the most popular answer was undoubtedly "data in Taiwan".
1. what is the data center?
(1) Front desk, middle desk and background
Front desk refers to the front-end platform composed of various front-end systems. Each foreground system is a user contact, that is, the system directly used or interacted by the end users of the enterprise, and it is the intersection of the enterprise and the end users.
background refers to the back-end platform composed of background systems. Each background system generally manages a kind of core resources (data calculation) of the enterprise, such as financial system, product system, customer management system, warehouse logistics management system, etc. These systems constitute the background of the enterprise.
The foreground and the background are just like two gears with different rotating speeds. Because the foreground should respond to the needs of front-end users quickly and pay attention to rapid innovation iteration, the faster the rotation speed is, the better. The background is faced with relatively stable back-end resources, and the system is old and complex, and even subject to laws and regulations and other relevant compliance constraints, so stability is often the highest, the more stable the better, and the slower the speed, the better.
with the continuous development of enterprise affairs, the problem of "unbalanced matching" of the gear speed in the "foreground and background" has gradually emerged. The middle platform is like adding a set of "speed change gears" between the foreground and the background, which matches the speed of the foreground and the background. It is a bridge between the foreground and the background. It is born for the foreground, easy to use, and smoothly flows the background resources to users and responds to users.
(II) The origin of "data center"
"data center" is not a technical term. Simply put, it refers to a platform that collects, calculates, stores and processes massive data through data technology, and unifies standards and caliber to achieve the purpose of managing and applying enterprise data assets. After unifying the data, the data center forms standard data, and then stores it to form a big data asset layer, thus providing efficient services to customers.
the concept of "data center" was first put forward by Alibaba in 2115. Alibaba believes that the data platform is an intelligent big data system that integrates methodology, tools and organization. Through years of unremitting efforts, under the constant catalytic nourishment of business, Ali people have precipitated their own technical and business capabilities into a comprehensive capability platform, which has the ability to respond quickly to changes and innovations in front-office business.
Zhong Hua, the chief architect of Alibaba Middleware and the author of "Alibaba's Strategic Thought and Architecture Practice in the Middle Office", said that in the process of using Ali technology to promote the digital transformation of enterprises and establish a digital middle office, the first challenge is business, followed by technology. The so-called business challenge is that from the business perspective, the * * * business modules are precipitated into the * * * business-sharing middle platform, and the personalized business is stripped out to form the front desk, forming a new pattern of "large, medium and small front desk".
the core experience of Alibaba's development of digital China is that the original * * * enjoyment IT department must find a strong Internet business as a starting point and turn itself into a core business department, so as to truly transform itself into a * * * enjoyment IT department of the enterprise, instead of a deformed * * * enjoyment IT department, which is the concept of "business nourishment" mentioned by Ali * * * enjoyment business department.
second, why should enterprises lay out the data center?
the core value of the data center is to help enterprises plan, manage and integrate trivial business data in a unified way, and form a value realization channel that conforms to the characteristics of enterprises-that is, the "digital assets" of enterprises. In this process, the main problems aimed at by the data center are to improve the data governance ability of enterprises, provide data management tools and improve data utilization efficiency.
for traditional enterprises, it is not enough to build a competence center, and it is necessary to get through these terminals. A "special soldier" is useless. What it really needs is to build up its own artillery and radar capabilities. The ultimate goal of the data center is to "digitize all business and commercialize all data", gather all data into the data center, get through the data flow and data link of each business line, and understand the current situation of enterprise data.
when providing data services for data applications, reduce the repeated development of data platforms and reduce the repeated storage of data, thus reducing the cost of enterprises. At the same time, a unified data storage, data usage model center and capability center are established to aggregate data in related business fields, which solves the demand of data interconnection and realizes that one plus one is greater than two in data value.
Take Alibaba as an example. Its data center system consists of three core modules: multiple data collection and access, public data center and unified data service. It has successfully realized business dataization and data businessization in Ali business ecology such as new retail, finance, logistics, marketing, tourism, health, entertainment and social interaction, and empowered the business front desk and the cloud in both directions.
Alibaba's data platform opened to the outside world helped the membership of Haidilao's cloud fishing APP soar in 2118. More intelligently, the app can accurately depict every user, remember every user's tastes and preferences, and then realize personalized and customized "thousands of people and thousands of pots" service. According to public data, up to now, the registered members of Yunshanglao have reached 45 million, an increase of 51% compared with 2118. In addition, CCTV, ASUS, RT Mart, etc. have already enjoyed the service of Ali Data.
AliPay, owned by Ali, has changed from a financial payment tool to an open platform for digital life. It can not only buy financial services, electronic payment, loan and credit card repayment, but also add convenience life sections such as take-out and fruit and vegetable supermarket. Alipay wants to do only one thing, and that is to become a part of people's lives. To achieve this goal, it depends on the transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises to digital management.
third, how do enterprises lay out the data center?
from the perspective of enterprise application, it is not easy to manage business data and tap the value of data by using the data center. There are four main processes for enterprises to digitize the middle platform:
(1) Connecting
Internally, enterprises need to connect front-end with front-end, front-end and back-end supply chains and manufacturing systems. Externally, the data links between people, people and things, things and things in the whole business scenario are identified and planned, and the business data demand scenarios are sorted out in combination with the characteristics of enterprises.
(II) Precipitating core competence
Unified planning, collection and storage of scattered business data, and establishment of data asset catalogue, laying a foundation for business data governance. The actual competitiveness of each enterprise is different, some win by products and some by cost. But these core competencies must be settled before they can be empowered to new businesses.
(3) Turning data into assets
According to Ali's "digital operation", it means business dataization and data assetization. In the past, no one even knew who the consumers were, and these data precipitated very little. Now the technology can make you do business data, but how to use the data accumulated by many enterprises? This is the problem that China Taiwan has solved, and the data resources are utilized and turned into data assets. Build a data center, and all business lines such as production and processing, logistics and transportation, financial management and control, marketing and customer management will form a fast and stable data value processing channel.
(4) Let the assets play their value
After data becomes assets, you need to find a scene to use it. For a simple example, how does Starbucks make money? Attached meal. Coffee itself is often unprofitable, just a traffic business. But it tries to recommend a side meal to you through scenes. This is the process of data assets scene.
Another example is * * * enjoying a bicycle, which may not make more money in itself, but after collecting data, you can make money through data services. This is especially true for enterprises that open stores online. It is very difficult to train a good store manager offline, but if you have a lot of data, you can use artificial intelligence to replace a lot of work of the store manager, because the store manager is nothing more than replenishment and product selection.
in the future, the data center will be an important support for digital management. Through the precipitation of data and technical means, to provide users with better services, data center was born based on this concept. Through the data center, we can improve the efficiency of enterprises, continuously improve the responsiveness of users, realize digital operation, and better support business development and innovation.
Nowadays, the data center is a very attractive digital solution for many enterprises. However, enterprises need to promote the digital process with business needs, not blindly. Only when enterprises are driven by clear business needs and matched with perfect digital solutions can the probability of transformation failure be reduced.