Keep Running to Lead the Race

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”, this is a dialog between Alice and the Red Queen in the film Alice in Wonderland and also perfectly depicts today CSPs’ status quo. CSPs were leading the technology and innovation in the past decade, but almost lost the battlefield to market challengers or disruptors: some of them are well-known web-scale companies, while some are start-ups that may disrupt the world in an unexpected manner.

We all recognize that the fuel of the innovation are data, IoT, AI and Cloud. However, none of them is native and originated from telecom companies. Thus, here comes the consequence – you compete with your enemies with machine guns, but they are fighting against with nuclear weapons.

It is not a fair play now. What you can do is to better leverage these technologies and tools to reinvent business models and build sustained differentiation, explore a new battlefield where you can dominate the war.

Let’s take a look at the market realities, which could make our life comfortable in the future but may cause business anxieties today:

• In the rapidly evolving world of the Internet of Things, market disruption is accelerating.

Industry players are shining a light on their capabilities of connecting everything, but struggling with a clear vision and profitable business models since the value fabric of IoT is so complex and no one company can dominate the whole ecosystem.

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be the core for providers to create new revenue platforms and provide new services to customers, but they need to be absorbed by new business models to exert the important influence. Technology innovation cannot create value alone.
• The 5G will impact not only networks, but also our homes, workplaces, cities, and our lifestyles. However, CSPs have reached a consensus that developing 5G is too costly and complicated given the lack of know-how and correct business models. In this case, it won’t move as rapidly as we expected.

In today’s market, business model differentiation matters more, even than technology innovation.

Alibaba Cloud has penetrated to various industries and powered the digital transformation journey with disruptive business models and technologies, which has proved their value proposition and track record of successes. Together with Alibaba Cloud, Whale Cloud aim to be a Cloud Native Transformation Provider for cross-industry business, deliver a frictionless, hyper-efficient and off-loaded intelligent service ecosystem to power the digital transformation, but this time, we want to lead the running, not keep in the same place.