According to Gartner data, in the first quarter of 20 16, the shipment of Inspur 8 servers increased by 3 1% year-on-year, ranking first in the market. In the past quarter of 10, Inspur 8-way server kept the first market share in China.
If you want to ask how Inspur did it, the answer lies in a market strategy that Inspur has adhered to for many years-the long-term persistence of high-end strategy.
In the second half of 20 10, Inspur launched China's first eight-way server TS850, which was quickly recognized by customers as soon as it went on the market. Although it was only sold for six months in that year, the annual sales volume and sales volume still entered the top three in China market. Then, Inspur's share in the eight-way server market rose all the way, gradually surpassing the two traditional giants in this field, IBM and HP, becoming the first in the market and continuing to expand its leading edge.
Shanghai Qingpu District Information Committee is a witness to the business growth of Inspur No.8 Road. 20 12, the first phase of Qingpu e-government cloud Project adopts Inspur eight-way server. The person in charge of information technology said that the first phase of the project was still in the risk period, not only because cloud computing technology was far from universal at that time, but also because it was the first time to purchase Inspur products. At that time, many products from foreign manufacturers were used, and some were not at ease. But after practical application, such doubts are dispelled a little. "Inspur participated in the project planning from the beginning, and the implementation, deployment and launch were all in accordance with the highest standards. After the launch, the system performance exceeded expectations." In the second and third phases of the project, Qingpu continuously purchased Inspur 8-way servers.
Three steps of high-end strategy
Inspur is the first local enterprise to independently develop an eight-way server, but the eight-way server is only the product of the downward shift of Inspur's high-end strategic technology. The goal of Inspur's high-end breakthrough is 32 or more key application hosts.
In 20 10, Inspur successfully developed the first eight-way server Tissot TS850, but the history of Inspur's high-end strategy was much earlier than that in 20 10. Previously, Inspur's exploration of high-end breakthrough paths, especially its great success in the four-way server business, provided a solid foundation for Inspur 20 10 to suddenly emerge in the eight-way field. In 2009, the sales volume of four-way server NF560D2 independently developed by Inspur exceeded 1 10,000 units, which was a milestone success of Inspur in the middle and high-end field, which indicated that Inspur had leading operation capability in the high-end industry field, which was the biggest guarantee for Tissot TS850 to quickly open the market situation.
It is an attempt and preparation of Inspur's high-end strategy that a single four-way server breaks through the sales of 10,000 units. Inspur's high-end strategy is divided into three steps, gradually breaking through the core technology of high-end multi-channel servers and establishing independent high-end technology and industrial ecology. The first step is to design the eight-way server independently and master the design ability of the high-end server system, which is the transition stage from the eight-way server to the key application host field; The second step is to develop an independent 32-channel key application host, master the core technologies and key technologies such as architecture and processor collaborative chip, and form an industrial scale; The third step is to develop a new generation of 1000-core host system with higher performance and stronger stability.
Six years after the strategy was released, Inspur turned it into reality, and Inspur eight-way server ranked first in China market for 10 quarter in a row. The market share of 32-way key application hosts in high-end Unix is 14%, ranking second.
Strategic Forecast of Tide —— The Reform of Information Construction in China
However, at 20 10, the eight-way server is still a niche market. At that time, the annual sales volume was often less than 1000, which changed a lot. The reason why such a narrow field is taken as the starting point of high-end strategy is because Inspur has a clear judgment on the industry-eight-way is not only the commanding height of competition in the server industry, but also the main field of future market growth.
Judging from the market demand, China's informatization construction is in a transitional period. On the one hand, information construction has rapidly changed from decentralized inefficient mode to centralized efficient mode. In the government industry, most information construction projects are implemented under the leadership of the provinces and the central government. In the enterprise field, especially in finance, telecommunications and other industries, information procurement is mostly controlled by corporate headquarters. On the other hand, the integration, centralization and combing of the original system account for an increasing proportion of information investment, while the investment in the new system is decreasing. Under the joint action of two factors, the number of large-scale and ultra-large-scale systems has increased dramatically, and the market demand for large-scale computing equipment is increasing.
At that time, only foreign minicomputers could be used in large computing systems with more than four channels. These devices are criticized for their high price and untimely service.
The Strategic Forecast of Inspur —— Cloud Computing, Big Data and internet plus.
From a technical point of view, cloud computing and big data, which just emerged at that time, also provided long-term impetus for the growth of Eight Roads. Industry clouds and private clouds tend to be large servers such as four-way and eight-way servers. Eight-way server not only has advantages in performance, reliability and space utilization, but also has advantages in procurement cost and overall cost. On the other hand, big data technology is gradually applied to various industries, especially traditional high-end industries such as finance and telecommunications. These users prefer to use eight-way servers instead of following the technical route of Internet operators using two or less low-end servers.
The market data of the past six years also confirmed the judgment of Inspur. In 20 14, the growth rate of the eight-way market was 75.6%, which was four times the average growth rate of the whole server market. The growth rate of 20 15 is 70%, which is 3.5 times of the average growth rate.
Of course, from a longer-term perspective, "internet plus" will provide greater guarantee for the growth of the eight-way server market. With the comprehensive integration of the traditional industry economy and the new generation of information technology, the scale of users' information systems, transactions and data will continue to expand rapidly, which will generate sustained and strong demand for eight-way servers.
Evolution of products-host technology moving down
Inspur 8-way server adopts host technology such as physical dual-partition architecture, time sequence control, partition logic control, and monitoring management based on NUMA, which continuously speeds up the iterative update speed of product technology. In just a few years, the iteration of Tissot TS850, Tissot TS860 and Tissot TS860G3 products has been completed, and the overall level has been at the forefront of the industry.
Jilin Publishing Group has completed the integration of group information system based on Inspur Eight-way Xeon server. The person in charge said that Inspur 8-way server met or exceeded expectations in performance, reliability, manageability, advancement, security and expansibility, which laid a good foundation for future information construction and made it walk in the forefront of peers.
Limit of platform expansion
Extensibility is an unchangeable hard demand of users, and it is also the basic consideration of the design of Inspur Eighth Road. Inspur's eight-way server has reached the maximum expansion of the platform. The latest Tissot TS860G3 can support 192 physical cores, 24TB of memory and 26 PCI-E3.0 slots. Moreover, Inspur No.8 Road has always adopted the static physical dual-partition technology, which brings good flexibility to customers' applications.
China Heavy Duty Truck adopts Tissot TS860 to build the database system of vehicle networking cloud platform. Lei Su, head of the company's information department, said that the adoption of Inspur 8-way server is mainly technical attraction, and Inspur is a local enterprise with good service. Lei Su also emphasized the static physical partition technology of TS860, that is, 1 TS860 can be used as two independent 4-way servers, with the upper as a high-end database server and the lower as two application servers, which is flexible and convenient.
More than 80 RAS characteristics
Eight-way server mainly undertakes key applications such as core database and large ERP. Usability is the most important feature of a product, and it is also the most difficult and complicated feature in technology. The latest Tissot TS860G3 has more than 80 items, which is about 3 times higher than the first generation. These technologies cover all levels from chip, link, module and system, forming a complete logical link, which ensures the stability and security of the system and data.
Tissot TS860 is adopted in e-government cloud, Changji Prefecture, Xinjiang. Last month, the data center suddenly lost power, and the UPS power was limited, so it could only supply power for servers, storage, transmission, security and other functional equipment. The air conditioner had to be turned off, and the temperature of the computer room once reached 43.6 degrees Celsius. They thought that the equipment would stop because of overheating, and the data might be destroyed, but they didn't expect all the servers of Inspur 8 to run stably for six hours until the power supply was normal.
Intelligent and easy to maintain
Inspur further upgraded the idea of high availability design-from "fault self-handling" to "early fault diagnosis and early warning", which first needs the support of intelligent technology. Tissot TS860 integrates about 500 sensors, forming a comprehensive monitoring network. These sensors transmit information to BMC chip, and the system diagnoses the health status of components according to a predetermined algorithm to remind administrators to replace and upgrade in advance.
Intelligent technology not only improves the usability level, but also effectively simplifies the work of data center administrators. Tissot TS860G3 adopts fully modular design, which is easy to be disassembled without tools and maintained. It is very convenient for administrators to replace or upgrade parts. Parts replacement and expansion of TS860G3 can be completed online without downtime.
Moreover, TS860 is equipped with a light path status display screen on the front panel of the server, so that users can customize the required information, including equipment resource utilization and fault alarm, and administrators can locate faults through the diagnosis panel.
More importantly, Inspur's eight-way server can develop management modules according to customer needs. For example, there are a large number of mobile devices in China, and internal management software based on IPMI has been developed. However, the naming rules and alarm rules of devices and modules are different from those of Inspur's existing products, so Inspur has modified the underlying rules of the whole management software to ensure compatibility with China Mobile Management Software.
Expand the data analysis ecology
China Industrial and Commercial Bank Head Office, China Petroleum, Donghua Group, Shandong Audit Office, Hubei Industrial and Commercial Bureau, etc. All of them adopt the cloud computing scheme based on Inspur 8-way server, and the advantages of this scheme, such as flexibility, high availability and low overall cost, have been recognized by customers.
Hubei Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce has built a unified cloud computing environment based on Inspur eight-way server. The person in charge of the Information Department of the Hubei Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce said that the credit information publicity system is deployed on the cloud computing platform and is an information project that is unified in the country. The online time of Hubei province is ahead of the requirements of the General Administration. In more than 30 provinces across the country, it took the lead in completing the docking with the credit information publicity system of the General Administration. The flexibility and low cost of Inspur cloud computing solution are very obvious.
In addition to the two main applications of online trading and cloud computing, Inspur Eight-way business is vigorously building an industrial ecology for data analysis.
At present, with the continuous development of big data technology, customers in many industries have begun to deploy various data intelligent platforms, especially in key industries such as finance, telecommunications and transportation. Such users prefer to use large servers with more than four channels. On the one hand, Inspur constantly develops corresponding hardware solutions, such as VMe SSD acceleration solution, on the other hand, it jointly develops corresponding solutions with major manufacturers through joint certification, such as IBM DB2 and BLU.
Pioneer of internationalization
While doing a good job in the China market, Inspur also began to expand into the global market, and initially established a global operation system. Its partners are all over the United States, Russia, Germany, Japan and other 18 countries, and its products also have a certain market share in these areas.
The growth of multi-channel universal servers is not only the trend in China market, but also the trend in the global market, because the combination and upgrading of new generation information technologies such as cloud computing and big data with the traditional economy is rapidly unfolding around the world. If Inspur successfully replicates China's experience model in the world, multi-channel and other high-end businesses will usher in greater development.
Experts said that with the further application of private cloud, hybrid cloud and real-time analysis in China market, China customers are more inclined to buy mid-to-high-end servers to host server virtualization, desktop virtualization, Docker and memory computing, and manufacturers with advantages in the mid-to-high-end server market are expected to gain faster growth and higher profitability in the future.