Matt Wang: Maybe people who just started to hear wisdom on earth don't understand it. What does this have to do with our IT? It's as if I recall that in the past ten years, we have a lot that we didn't understand when we first met him. For example, I just put it forward, and then SOA is still being promoted among us. Many times, many customers and some of our users don't necessarily know why they want to develop in this direction. When I talked with Mr. Wang and Mr. Song this morning, sometimes if we were confined to our own living environment, we probably didn't see a macro and external change, just like the world economic crisis that happened at the beginning of last year or in the middle of last year. We just read in the newspaper that it may be hype. Where did the crisis come from?
We did feel it in some coastal areas of Guangdong this year, and the government realized that it was really because we were linked to the global economy, and what could not happen somewhere had nothing to do with us. So what I want to share with you today is IBM in this respect, in IT, because we have many customers, and our customers are all over the world. In this process, we realize that the next step will really become a smart earth.
International business machines Corp.
Towering mass
According to the market pyramid model, based on the pyramid tip, it is difficult to have both scale effect and high profit. However, IBM, which stands at the top of the IT market, once again breaks away from convention-its high-profile vision of "smart earth" since the end of 2008 is setting off a new round of strategic changes for IT enterprises.
The wisdom of the earth
According to IBM's definition, "smart earth" includes three dimensions: first, it can more thoroughly perceive and measure the nature and changes of the world; Second, promote a more comprehensive interconnection of the world; Third, on the basis of the above, all things, processes and operation modes will be more deeply intelligent, so enterprises will gain more intelligent insights.
According to the idea, in the era of "smart earth", it will become a hidden and active tool to make the wisdom of the earth run and penetrate into people, natural systems, social systems, commercial systems and various organizations. So in this era, IBM hopes that it can penetrate into every corner of wisdom like air and become an indispensable factor for the survival of the human planet. "You may find IBM directly when choosing a service; Or behind some seemingly natural services, I learned that the power to provide support also comes from IBM. " Li Shigong, Dean of IBM China Research Institute, expressed this imagination.
Although Li Shigong can't measure and predict the future influence of "Smart Earth" at present, it can't be ignored that IBM once again plays the role of market leader in the process of promoting "Smart Earth".
expand the market
In fact, "smart earth" is not the starting point for IBM to pursue scale. As early as 1996, when IBM put forward "e-commerce", they began to consciously strive to maintain the high-end position of the market and pursue scale. The so-called way to pursue scale is to directly enlarge the market.
From the outside world, IBM has been playing a high-end concept card in the IT field from proposing "e-commerce" to "on-demand e-commerce" and then to this "smart earth". However, Zhou Wei, chairman of IBM Greater China, believes that this is IBM changing the traditional way of doing things. "Many times in the past, IBM came from behind and achieved catch-up after the opponent proposed new technologies." However, from the day Moore's Law encountered IT innovation, which led to the subversion of the industry, the vitality of this model was unsustainable. IBM once missed the opportunity of market reform because it stuck to its hardware advantage, and thus suffered a huge loss of $8 billion in 1994, and accumulated losses of $0.6 billion in the following three years. Therefore, "IBM must change its strategy, achieve progress, create markets through innovation, and drive the whole industry".
This change in style, in short, is to enlarge the market. Let's look at IBM's leading path: first, grasp the market trend, make internal preparations for technology and operation mode, and then announce the concept to attract the extensive attention of the industry and customers as much as possible, and stimulate their potential or hazy demand awareness. After obtaining these * * * needs from the first-line application vendors, we will focus on relevant research and launch products that meet the needs at the first time. At the same time, the "broadcast" effect of IBM concept will also attract a large number of customers. Obviously, compared with selling products to customers before, this model can not only strengthen IBM's image as a leader among customers, but also enable them to gain a larger market scale.
With the development of IT industry, from 1996 to now, IBM has introduced three concepts. The gradual expansion of these concepts in connotation and extension has further expanded the breadth and depth of IBM's market. In the era of "e-commerce" and "on-demand", IBM mainly pays attention to the needs and experiences of users applying IT products and services; Starting from the "smart earth", it is integrated into the intelligent application of business in the user field. Obviously, this "ubiquitous" support demand will enable IBM to get bigger and deeper business.
Under this premise, open cooperation is the only rule for IBM to enlarge the market. In fact, not everything is IBM's strength in the market involved, especially the industry resources and technologies in the non-IT field. As the head of IBM's global strategic planning department said, "We see in more and more fields that innovation requires the participation of many members with professional knowledge at a more subtle level." Therefore, in order to build a broad ecosystem, IBM has taken many measures including capital to attract as many partners as possible. Even the IBM research department, which has always been self-contained, cooperated to introduce interdisciplinary research a few years ago. For example, in February 2008, IBM and Saudi Arabia established a joint venture research institute to conduct joint solar energy and seawater desalination research using IBM's nanotechnology. In addition, IBM China Research Institute is also conducting joint research and development with partners and customers.
"This change is particularly evident in the months after the launch of Smart Earth. Now customers take the initiative to ask our research department to participate in research and development. " In Li Shigong's view, this research and development model has effectively promoted IBM's vision. For example, they used to judge that a certain high-end technology might play a role in 3 ~ 5 years based on limited market information, but through recent full contact with partners, they found that such technology is needed all over the world. To this end, they readjusted R&D resources and accelerated related research.
It is worth considering that there are quite a few other companies that saw market development opportunities in the same period as IBM, but why is it that only IBM has made the most remarkable achievements in using opportunities to enlarge the market? The reason is that some experts believe that this is because IBM's open and cooperative business development ideas are in line with the trend of flattening in the world today. When discussing this trend, thomas l. friedman, the author of The World is Flat, stressed: "Globalization, which began in the 265,438+0th century, is erasing all boundaries, and the hierarchy is being challenged by the bottom of society, or it is changing from a top-down relationship to a more equal and cooperative relationship." Obviously, based on this development trend, no monopoly model can last long, and only cooperation can survive. Cooperation must be rooted in openness.
Of course, Li Shigong also admitted that openness means a lot of flexibility and flexibility, so enterprises need to have good management ability to cope with changes. For example, if the protection and management of intellectual property rights are not done well, enterprises will have no way to share research and further cooperation with their partners. "IBM 100 years of enterprise experience and 60 years of research and exploration enable us to cope with this change."
Disk control capability
We should not only enlarge the market, but also strive for greater benefits in it. The latter's ability to control the market mainly comes from IBM's business model based on consulting services: first, consulting services are recognized by customers, and then the corresponding products in the IBM ecosystem are packaged into solutions and sold to customers.
From 65438 to 0996, the organizational form of IBM Global Service began to operate independently. With the birth of service business, IBM has also changed from selling products directly to customers to service-oriented marketing. This service-oriented business model not only helped IBM recover from the decline, but also helped them successfully get rid of the recent economic crisis. In 2008, IBM achieved the best performance in history, with annual revenue of $654.38+003.6 billion, an increase of 5% over the previous year, and profit growth of over 654.38+08%.
This "profit, larger scale" business model looks like fish and bear's paw, but it has proved to be the key to success in IBM. In the "Smart Earth" stage, IBM will improve its service objects and contents. Previously, IBM's service influence was oriented to enterprise CIOs, while its content focused on IT applications. In the future, we will try to influence the CEO level, so as to convey to them suggestions on smart operation such as industry integration and enterprise globalization.
Although IBM is an American company, GIE has become its most effective market pass in recent two years. At present, 60% of IBM employees and 57.87% of its revenue come from outside the United States. Their global payment center is in Shanghai, the global procurement center is in Shenzhen, the financial center is in Kuala Lumpur, and the human resources center is in Manila ... After such global integration, IBM has maximized the benefits of "globalization", such as reducing their procurement centers from 300 to 3, thus saving more than 25 billion US dollars. The global integration platform also makes R&D more convenient and efficient. For example, their research on smart grid and energy saving and emission reduction projects in China has gathered global resources and formed a global R&D team. The reason why they do this is "to study the China issue from the perspective of a smart earth, not only considering the territorial demand, but also linking it with the global situation." Li Shigong believes that after the scheme is submitted to customers, it will increase the ability of globalization for customers. Of course, it will also accelerate the realization of IBM's concept of "smart earth" objectively.
IBM itself has always been the research model of its service department, and the research department is the forerunner of the technology and business model of the whole enterprise. For example, when IBM showed the results of GIE to customers in the market, the research department was already practicing GIE's next move.
Regarding how to obtain effective information in China, how to translate information into the language of the GIE platform, and how to make use of the scattered global resources on the GIE platform for cooperation, Li Shigong said that even if a problem in mainland China is solved, it is not necessary to mobilize team members from Europe and America to come to China. The latter can participate in the research of China project in their own office, and the task of picking up problems and needs on the spot is handed over to local people without language and cultural barriers. Eventually, these capabilities will be delivered to customers in the form of services. When customers become global and intelligent, the value of IBM will also increase. Li Shigong believes that "this is the best scale development model for IBM."