Is the Domestic Database Entering the Second Half?
I wrote this in a hurry on the high-speed train on Saturday morning. Some parts were not well thought out, so I withdrew it soon. A friend left a message saying that they were very concerned about what I talked about and hoped that I could send it to him privately. I thought I should re-edit it and send it out again.
There have been too many events related to information technology and innovation recently. From the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut to the new stage of the Sino-US technology and financial war. The unrestricted war in Lebanon has broken the bottom line of human evil, and will also slap the faces of those who always think that we exaggerate the necessity of information security. Under the national strategy, anything can happen. In fact, many young IT people may not know much about the "Stuxnet Operation" fifteen years ago. It is not important whether the hacker operation that was exaggerated as Israeli special agents achieved strategic goals that bombers and missiles could not achieve without bloodshed is the same as revealed by the Americans. What is important is that the cruelty of the war in the field of digital security has been fully exposed. When the incident happened, I thought it was the first battle case of "Unrestricted Warfare" in reality.
From the perspective of XC work itself, in recent years, a series of XC-related incentive policies have been introduced, which has greatly increased the enthusiasm of the user side. From the perspective of the database industry, the results of the first batch of national tests in 2024 will be released soon. This time, the participating companies cover mainstream products in centralized, distributed, and analytical databases. The introduction of the new list is of great guiding significance for database users who are currently in the selection stage. It will also allow some users who are undecided when selecting to choose more accurately.
The events listed above are all catalysts for XC acceleration, and are currently accepted and recognized by most people. Of course, there are still some friends who do not accept the necessity of domestic substitution. My point of view is that if you are engaged in the database industry, then whether you accept domestic substitution or not, domestic substitution is something you must pay serious attention to. If you have the absolute strength to ignore this reality, then you can continue to develop along the existing track, otherwise you must change your concept and integrate into this work as soon as possible.
I have said before that with the release of the national test results this year, the competition for domestic databases may enter the second half. Products that have passed the national test will fight on the main battlefield, while those that have not passed or have not signed up to participate will have to test their funds and determination. It does not mean that there is no chance, but that the road will be more difficult. The national test is actually a good means of guiding the industry. A market where hundreds of databases compete is definitely not a good market. It is difficult for everyone to eat enough, and the strong will also become hungry and pale.
It is not an exaggeration to compare passing the national test to getting an admission ticket. All policies are definitely only for products in the table. Manufacturers that have not received admission tickets should either seize the opportunity to raise funds, continue to work hard, strive to get some leftovers, replenish their bodies, and then fight again, strive to establish their own flag in the future market, and use technical capabilities and product strength to be reborn.
Or simply donate the product to an open source foundation and continue looking for opportunities in another track, but it is hard to say what will happen if you go down this path. There are no particularly successful examples of open source database products in China. Unless the product is strong enough to be exported and make a difference in the global public cloud market, this road is quite difficult.
Another way is merger and reorganization. When the landlords have little spare capacity, I think many large companies will not necessarily spend money to acquire enterprises. It may be more cost-effective to wait for some small companies to fail and acquire people. Therefore, when the second half of the race officially starts, this track will also be full of blood and rain.
The second half of this game is destined to be a bloody battle of life and death. The capital carnival of domestic databases may come to an end, and more rational investment and entrepreneurship will gradually return. The ecosystem around databases will also develop rapidly. When a whale falls, all things will come to life. I am optimistic about the domestic database market after its rebirth.
Manufacturers who are lucky enough to enter the second half of the race should not be careless. Although there are only a dozen or so competitors in the domestic database market in the future, which is different from the competition between Baidu and Baidu, the surrounding competitors are all extraordinary strong ones, and the cruelty of the competition is actually higher.
In order to win the finals, in addition to having very strong product strength, another very important factor is ecological strength. Product strength can be improved by the company's own internal training and increased investment. Improving ecological strength is much more difficult.
There is probably no need to say much about why domestic databases need to build a strong ecosystem. On Friday night, I had a small gathering with several industry leaders in Shanghai, and the two words we talked about the most were "ecosystem". The success of Oracle Database in China and even around the world is not only due to the good products, but also its good ecosystem is a very important boost. Domestic database manufacturers are envious of Oracle's ecosystem, but how was Oracle's ecosystem established? In the simplest terms, that is "let all participants make money." In other words, Oracle database products make Oracle database services a profitable business.
When I discuss ecosystem construction with domestic database vendors, I often use this point of view to ask them: Can you currently make third-party service vendors make money? Only when vendors participating in the ecosystem make money will more ecosystem vendors join your ecosystem.
With the acceleration of the work of replacing databases with localization, it is obvious to both database manufacturers and database users that the original factory services cannot keep up. However, the vast majority of database users still hope that the original factory can provide services, because they are skeptical about the ability of third-party services. Database manufacturers have no choice but to bite the bullet and hold on. Among the domestic databases, DAMO has the largest after-sales service team, which has an after-sales service team of about 600 people. It seems like a lot, but if a large number of customers do database migration within 2-3 years, these hundreds of people will not be enough.
If you want to develop a third-party service ecosystem, you must have enough profitable projects handed over to third-party service providers, but this is not possible at present. Domestic database manufacturers are also developing third-party service partners, but the current approach is questionable. They will set some thresholds to find some relatively strong companies willing to participate in cooperation. These ecological partners cannot make profits through cooperation with database manufacturers for the time being, but they have certain strengths and can last for a while.
This method seems good, but it has a fatal flaw. Although these manufacturers may not be profitable at present, this business is not their main business and may never become their main business. Therefore, in terms of technical capabilities, personnel composition, organizational structure, project implementation, etc., they are essentially different from Oracle's third-party service providers back then. Using this method to replicate Oracle's success back then may not necessarily be reliable.
In any case, in the second half of the domestic database market, product strength and ecosystem strength will be the key to whether a database can succeed. Increasing investment to improve product capabilities and increasing investment to accelerate ecosystem construction are issues that database vendors who want to make a difference should consider as soon as possible.