How should PaaS vendors face the ascendant To B market of communication cloud?

Among the overall cloud service market IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, the PaaS market has grown significantly. According to iResearch's "2021 China Basic Cloud Service Industry Data Report", the growth rate of China's PaaS market is expected to reach 49% in 2021. The Internet communication cloud market in the PaaS track, due to 5G's capabilities in large bandwidth, high reliability, low latency, and large connections, will accelerate the transition from traditional communications to Internet communications, and promote cloud gaming, VR/AR, telemedicine, and smart cities The further landing of other application scenarios will promote the Internet communication cloud to enter the market of 100 billion yuan.

Figure 1: 2021 China Basic Cloud Service Industry Data Report by iResearch

In the next three years, iResearch predicts that the compound annual growth rate of the PaaS market will reach 51.5%, 49.8%, and 49.6%. There is no doubt that the PaaS market has entered a golden period of development. How to seize opportunities and meet challenges is a topic that must be answered before every PaaS communication cloud vendor. Rongyun, the world's leading Internet communication cloud manufacturer, explained its views based on its own entrepreneurial development.

"Full" communication capability is the core competitiveness of PaaS communication cloud vendors

To seize the opportunities in the PaaS market, communication cloud vendors must rely on the company's technical genes to build their own core competitiveness. This process is not accomplished overnight, but gradually developed as the market changes.

Rongyun CTO Ren Jie said, “Although our past experience is rich in IM and audio and video, we made a judgment at the beginning of our business. For the communication scene, instant messaging is non-exclusive and covers the scene. It is relatively larger and has a wider range of applications. Therefore, we first built the cloud communication capabilities of Rongyun around IM."

As an IM, online messaging and push arrivals are inseparable, but at the time Ren Jie discovered that the push channels provided by mobile phone manufacturers had not been opened up, which brought developers a lot of development workload for docking. Therefore, in 2015, Rongyun took the initiative to do this part of the work, providing PUSH capabilities to developers for free.

From the 1000th registered user to the 1000th paying user, after the business model of this PaaS communication cloud service was verified, Rongyun also ushered in explosive development. During the development process, Rongyun gradually realized that the needs of IM and RTC are highly coupled, and more than 80% of developers who use IM and PUSH will have RTC needs.

Therefore, Rongyun quickly polished its RTC capabilities and took the lead in the industry to propose the “IM+RTC+PUSH” overall communication solution, providing user developers with “full” communication capabilities of graphics, text, audio, and video. The core competitiveness of the cloud.

Safe and reliable communication capabilities are the competitiveness of PaaS cloud vendors that distinguish self-developed vendors

"In fact, it is not enough to provide'full' communication capabilities. This capability must be a safe and reliable service." Ren Jie believes, "This is the basic requirement of developers, and it is also what communication cloud vendors must do." Security and reliability It requires professional cloud vendors to optimize the deployment of the protocol layer and link layer globally, which costs a lot. This has also become the competitiveness of PaaS communication cloud vendors that are different from self-developed vendors.

In terms of security, Rongyun has set up three layers of protection: First, using a binary protocol, a security design of anti-replay and anti-hijacking is carried out at the bottom of the protocol. Second, encrypt the link layer. Ensure that the data cannot be obtained by others during transmission, even if it is obtained through a network device, it is all cipher text and cannot be decrypted. Third, the encryption of data storage on the end and regular scanning for security vulnerabilities can prevent problems before they happen.

In terms of reliability, from the most detailed design point of view, Rongyun uses cluster servers to back up data in remote locations. All data storage is not deployed on a single server node. If a single node backup fails, it can Achieve independent discovery, rapid failover, and automatically remove this part of data from the load and replace it with other backup data, so as not to affect the customer’s business; from the macro-architecture, a multi-cloud and multi-active architecture is deployed. Once a certain IaaS vendor's availability zone fails, it can be quickly transferred to other availability zones.

These tasks face very big challenges in terms of technology and cost, and are where professional track communication cloud vendors have a very competitive advantage.

In addition to the core competence of communication, we must have the ability to use scenarios

The emergence of new technologies will inevitably bring new forms of interaction, as well as new industries and new scenarios. In terms of seizing opportunities, we must pay close attention to the emergence of these new interactions and new scenarios, and be able to quickly empower new applications. Therefore, in addition to the core competence of safe and reliable communications, the ability to be scenario-based is the starting point for PaaS communications cloud vendors to compete in the second half.

In terms of new scenarios, the epidemic has forced changes in the general environment and accelerated the online application of various fields. First, the online application of pan-entertainment, including cloud games, cloud fitness, online KTV, and language chat rooms, etc. This year, due to the Clubhouse fire With the introduction of voice chat, a large number of radio applications began to appear, as well as e-sports games such as Werewolf and Script Kill, which are based on real-time voice interaction; followed by online education, K12 and some interactions of quality education, all need to be embedded Scenario-based capabilities, such as whiteboard function, review function, multi-person interaction with microphones, etc.

In addition to the Internet market, in the industry application market, new scenarios such as online government affairs, remote court trials, and contactless financial services have emerged. How to find the business logic of these new scenarios and abstract them into a universal SDK to meet developers' out-of-the-box and fast-online needs is a new test of the PaaS capabilities of cloud vendors.

In the future, with the development of 5G, including the combination with AI and AR/VR technologies, how to quickly empower cloud communications in more fields such as the Internet of Vehicles, drones, and smart cities will all be opportunities for PaaS service providers. Ability to be explored.

Actively respond to current challenges with actions that serve developers well

Opportunities have always coexisted with challenges, and so has the communications cloud industry. From the perspective of the industry, the challenge is that the development of the industry is generally limited by network infrastructure and terminal computing power. PaaS service providers should optimize algorithms, optimize codec technology, and optimize networks to meet existing constraints. Download as much as possible to achieve a higher definition, smoother, and lower latency experience.

From the perspective of enterprise development, taking Rongyun itself as an example, the challenge lies in globalization. PaaS vendors can maintain the continuous development of their enterprises by taking the path of globalization. To make a global layout, firstly, we need to do a good job in global network coverage, and strive to realize that every user can have the best communication experience all over the world; secondly, we must integrate with local culture, and strive to provide SDK from code to logic. Compilation is in line with the usage habits of overseas developers; third, actively understand the differences in the use of development tools by overseas developers, and deploy and adjust them in a timely manner.

Therefore, constructing its own developer ecology, serving the actions of developers, and actively facing the current challenges are the experience of Rongyun from its establishment to its development and growth. How to serve developers, Rongyun thinking summarized and shared the following points:

First, encapsulate the design of the SDK interface to be as concise and unambiguous as possible to reduce the difficulty of invocation for developers.

Second, the development documentation must be iterated continuously, infinitely close to the developer's reading habits.

Third, establish a complete service system. Not only a first-line, second-line, and third-line support system, but also a 7×24 service body

Department, there is also a one-hour work order response mechanism, and enterprise service groups, etc., which can provide developers with personal services in all aspects.

Fourth, continue to track new technologies and increase the exploration and R&D investment in low-code technologies.

Concluding remarks

Opportunities have arrived, but it is actually difficult to seize the opportunities. While seizing the opportunities, it is necessary to accept many challenges in the industry and its own development. Looking at the current Internet communication cloud PaaS service providers, there are only a handful of people who can talk about the sword in Huashan. Rongyun is growing at full speed with its core competitiveness of "full" communication capabilities after being verified by its service model and business model.