Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

Recently, the already hot relationship between cloud computing and AI has continued to heat up.

Whether it is from the continuous AI actions of various public cloud service providers to the emphasis on AI and industry integration at the Shanghai World Artificial Intelligence Conference, we can see that the essence of the two has been integrated to the greatest extent. Or, to put it another way, today's cloud computing.

In such an atmosphere, we can see that Baidu has just brought new changes to the industrial proposition of "cloud +AI."

Today, Baidu Chairman and CEO Li Yanhong issued a letter to all employees announcing "further upgrading the 'cloud +AI' strategy and improving the strategic position of Baidu Intelligent Cloud." The internal letter announced the efficient integration of Baidu intelligent cloud and CTO system. Yin Shiming, vice president of Baidu and general manager of intelligent cloud business group, led his team to report to Wang Haifeng, chief technology officer of Baidu.

Having a CTO directly in charge of the cloud computing business is a rare exploration among tech companies. The reason why we will see such actions in Baidu is to return to Baidu CTO system represented by Wang Haifeng and Baidu intelligent cloud industry process.

We know that Wang Haifeng is a famous AI scientist and representative of Baidu AI technology. Baidu AIG and TG system, which he is responsible for, have provided intelligent technology and basic technical support for Baidu's business lines, and empowered various industries through Baidu brain and flying paddle. Especially in the field of AI technology, the positioning of Wang Haifeng and Baidu AI technology team is integrated with Baidu intelligent cloud business system at this time, which obviously reveals Baidu's strategic judgment and business ambition in front of industrial intelligence.

Compared with the sudden and tentative nature that often appears when the Internet company structure is adjusted, this adjustment of Baidu intelligent cloud can be predicted and deduced relatively in Baidu industry intelligent strategy, even said to be a natural and natural change.

The reason for this is that Baidu AI technology system represented by Wang Haifeng, Baidu intelligent cloud system with ABC as strategic axis, and extensive cloud service market are changing rapidly around AI. The long-term trajectory of these changes must be unified acceleration and integration of production and research.

Li Yanhong stressed in his internal letter: "Baidu needs to build an intelligent cloud with artificial intelligence as the center, big data as the support and cloud computing as the foundation of ABC Trinity. "This judgment can help us understand why Baidu Intelligent Cloud will be integrated with CTO system at this moment.

The antecedents of this change are the weather, geography and harmony of "cloud +AI"; and the result of the change can be covered by the word "acceleration." This includes the acceleration of Baidu AI technology industrialization application, Baidu cloud market acceleration, and the acceleration of cloud computing industry positioning and industrial boundary change.

AI demand emerges from the cloud computing market

Let's first look at the macro changes in the cloud computing market.

Nowadays, all walks of life have become social topics. There are many reasons for this change, one of which is that the new normal of the development of the real economy is calling for the improvement of core productivity by intelligent technology and digital technology. This can be seen as the macro attraction of the new normal of the global economy to AI technology.

In August, China's manufacturing PMI was 49.5%, 0.2% lower than last month; the composite PMI output index was 53.0%, 0.1% lower than last month, which is a small fluctuation in the range of 53.0%-53.4% for five consecutive months. This data shows that the real industry represented by the manufacturing industry is experiencing weak productivity under overall stability and urgently needs technical factors to stimulate productivity improvement.

This economic background is happening all over the world. Its advantage for emerging technologies is that it opens new application boundaries for cloud computing +AI in the enterprise services market.

The reason why the economy's demand for intelligence occurs to a large extent in the cloud computing market is because technically logically, industrial AI training to reasoning requires computing power, and cloud is the absolute choice to provide this computing power. In addition, the demand for flexible computing power and concurrent deployment of AI tasks, as well as the call requirements of enterprises for a large number of AI capabilities and AI tools, have pushed cloud computing to the most suitable combination point for enterprise customers to apply AI technology.

So we see that cloud computing has changed from a pillar of Internet business to an intelligent container, a channel for connecting AI to the real economy. This change has profoundly affected the cloud service market and is causing a chain reaction to a series of factors such as customers, products and market patterns in the cloud market.

Under such economic + technological trends, the public cloud market is undergoing rapid iteration. Internationally, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, which encroach on AWS market share, focus on industrial AI applications, taking computing + framework +AI tools and capabilities as new stimulus points in the cloud computing market.

In China, Baidu Intelligent Cloud, which focuses on ABC strategy, namely AI+ big data + cloud, has become the cloud with the fastest market rise. Konaris and Synergy Research, two international organizations, agree that Baidu Smart Cloud has been firmly ranked first in China's public cloud market.

With innovative industries, traditional industries and real economy represented by manufacturing industry, the demand for AI computing power has surfaced. Notice the wording here is "sea surface." Because of the large size of this market audience, it is difficult to estimate its stock thickness.

Under such a background, cloud service vendors can provide enterprise customers with the depth of AI technology, and the availability of AI services has become the strategic core of the cloud service market. The hard power of basic algorithms, AI computing power and AI operating system, as well as the degree of integration between AI and cloud and data, will become the rigid competitive basis of the future visible cloud service market.

This is the time for the global economy and AI technology, and it is also the time for Baidu.

Baidu Intelligent Cloud Completing Run-up

Let's talk about geography again.

The so-called geographical location, perhaps in the right wind downward, choose the right terrain. There is no doubt that Baidu Intelligent Cloud has done this correctly under the wind direction of AI.

As early as 2016, Baidu Cloud at that time had released ABC Trinity development strategy. Since then, this strategic foundation has been continuously consolidated and upgraded. By December 2018, Baidu announced that its Intelligent Cloud Business Unit had been upgraded to an Intelligent Cloud Business Group (ACG). This architecture upgrade is widely regarded as a clearer strategic goal of Baidu Intelligent Cloud, which will carry Baidu AI technology's export position to the B-end market of various industries on the basis of cloud business.

The first stage of this strategic goal should be to quickly consolidate and broaden the B-end market export position of cloud +AI and clarify market cognition. In the past Baidu Cloud Intelligence Summit 2019, it was disclosed that with ABC and "Cloud +AI" as the core strategy, Baidu Intelligent Cloud doubled the number of users and revenue in the past year, and tripled the traffic and server growth, becoming the first cloud manufacturer in China. At present, Baidu intelligent cloud has been applied to four industries, including industrial manufacturing, agriculture, finance, education, logistics, media, meteorology, tourism and other industries to complete a large number of AI+ industry cases.

From business system to market changes, Baidu Intelligent Cloud has completed the first phase goal relatively ideally. After the run-up is the jump. After export consolidation, Baidu Intelligent Cloud must accelerate the pace of integration with the industry, take the lead in leading AI technology to deeply integrate into industrial applications, and become the productivity technology growth point really needed by the economic system, thus pulling up the overall industrial boundary of the cloud service market and the exclusive market area of Baidu Intelligent Cloud.

At the Cloud Intelligence Summit, Yin Shiming defined Baidu Intelligent Cloud's next task as "solving three major problems of productivity, automation, collaboration and sharing by promoting AI industrialization, and entering an intelligent era marked by new computing, new applications and new ecology."

This change may be briefly attributed to the change from the AI access stage to the AI industrialization stage.

When Baidu Intelligent Cloud has completed the strategic consolidation of cloud +AI on the technical foundation, market positioning, and customer empowerment solutions. Next, it was time to press the accelerator button.

This acceleration button depends on whether it can provide customers with deeply available, large-scale and automated AI services through the cloud service system. And this is Baidu AI technology has long been the direction of efforts, but also Wang Haifeng's strengths and where to go.

Prepare that cup of tea for Baidu CTO

At Baidu AI Developers Conference in July, Wang Haifeng asked AI to pour himself a cup of tea.

The taste of this cup of tea itself may only be known to Wang Haifeng himself, but the technical taste behind this cup of tea has already made various industries taste the sweetness of "future."

The reason for this is that the robot pouring tea at the AI developer conference has to listen and speak as well as accurately "see" the position of the person; it also has to complete the action through the precise control of the robotic arm, i.e. AIoT device. This has made AIoT equipment very close to the industrial operation ability of real people. It is the AI technology that each industry expects to have independent cognition, understanding and execution ability. Behind this cup of tea is the integration of various AI underlying technologies and computing power and equipment systems.

Earlier, at this year's Baidu Deep Learning Developer Summit, Wang Haifeng described his judgment on today's AI technology trends: technology tooling, automation, modularization, is pushing AI into the era of industrial mass production.

Therefore, behind that cup of tea, is AI industrialization large-scale production cycle technical judgment; and behind this judgment, is Wang Haifeng represented Baidu AI technology ten years accumulation and preparation.

Looking back at Wang Haifeng's practice experience in Baidu, we will find that promoting the popularization of AI technology to real application is the consistent axis of his responsibilities:

In the first stage after joining Baidu in 2010, Wang Haifeng is responsible for the foundation work of each AI technology, which can be said to be the earliest technical expert to promote AI technology to take root in Internet companies.

The second phase, Wang Haifeng is responsible for Baidu's traditional strong search business. This stage, let him and the business system produced more direct association, completed the comprehensive intelligent transformation of Baidu search. For example, the combination of search with knowledge graph and information flow, the incubation of small-degree assistants based on intelligent voice search, etc.

From the establishment of AIG to the third stage of serving as Baidu CTO, Wang Haifeng's main responsibility became to lead the AI technology system and complete the opening of AI technology to a wide range of internal and external needs. At present, Baidu brain version 5.0 has developed into "soft and hard integrated AI large production platform" on the basis of algorithm breakthrough and computing architecture upgrade; deep learning platform flying propeller has become the general operating system of Chinese deep learning developers.

In this process, the meticulous, pragmatic and forward-looking grasp of intelligent technology has become Wang Haifeng's professional characteristics and technical ideas.

Along this track, after leading cloud business, Wang Haifeng and Baidu AI technology system strong "AI application" concept and technology reserve, will access cloud computing export closer to industrial demand. When Baidu Intelligent Cloud is connected to Baidu CTO system, AI technology enables cloud business, and AI technology is released to the industry based on public cloud system, becoming a unified whole. Wang Haifeng's personal technology pursuit and academic path will be organically unified with Baidu's decision to win the AI era, as well as the demand of thousands of industries for industrialization and application of deep learning.

Autumn is crisp, it is time to drink tea.

Harmony and acceleration

If the market expansion of cloud computing +AI and the AI demand of various industries are regarded as the right time; the industrial form of Baidu intelligent cloud is regarded as the geographical position; and the technology accumulation and technical concept of Wang Haifeng and Baidu AI are regarded as human harmony, then Baidu intelligent cloud access CTO system will become the trend and choice of three-talent combination.

Well, you can see that three conditions have come together today. Chinese wisdom, pay attention to harmony symbiosis, according to the situation. When the conditions are ripe, Baidu's industrial intelligent road, but also can naturally press the long-awaited acceleration button.

When it comes to acceleration, we can see three levels of change:

1. After the structural adjustment, AIG and TG led by Wang Haifeng will not change as the strategic positioning and pillar role of Baidu Technology Center. On this basis, Baidu intelligent cloud and AIG, TG technology accumulation can complete the organizational structure level of high-speed docking, forming Baidu AI to intelligent cloud more efficient unified input and output.

2. The technical ability, scientific research ability and developer ecology contained in Baidu brain and flying paddle will produce stronger integrated synergy effect with Baidu intelligent cloud. Let industrial AI form the integration of development and market, the high consistency of technological innovation and industrial application, and the close integration of operating system and cloud computing system, so as to enhance industrial efficiency and strengthen the industrial competitiveness of Baidu intelligent cloud.

3. Let Wang Haifeng grasp the scientific research application and technology foresight, penetrate into Baidu intelligent cloud system more quickly, and become an industrial AI hub directly serving users in more industries.

This acceleration, in the long run, conforms to the further integration of Baidu and the objective law of industrial AI track. We know that the industry's requirements for AI technology can be essentially summarized into three points: convergence, availability, and accessibility. The three-point requirement is essentially a requirement for the deep integration of cloud service system and AI technology.

The so-called integration refers to the ability to integrate AI technology with enterprise needs, industry characteristics and expert wisdom. It is not only manifested as the actual combat capability of industrial solutions, but also as customization and modularization. The former belongs to the ABC practice of Baidu Intelligent Cloud, while the latter accommodates the technical capability change of Baidu AIG. When Baidu intelligent cloud access CTO system, the integrity of the two will be effectively unified.

For usability, on the one hand, enterprises need to be available in terms of packaging and integration, on the other hand, AI technology needs to continuously present innovations in basic algorithms, as well as the integration and re-development of vision, voice and knowledge-related technologies. Therefore, only a high degree of unity between cloud computing system and technology system can promote AI technology from surface application to core application of productivity.

In the field of easy access, enterprise users need support from AI computing power and AI acceleration capabilities on the one hand, and AI technology on the other hand to present highly instrumental and automated technical characteristics. Baidu Brain and Flying Propeller teams are significantly enhancing the latter, bringing highly integrated tools such as EasyDL. When automation and tooling access ABC data and computing support, enterprises can truly access the AI world at a low threshold.

Therefore, the integration of Baidu intelligent cloud and Baidu CTO system is an inevitable choice under the guidance of long-term technology and industry, and is also a key step for Baidu to accelerate the construction of cloud +AI and industrial intelligent system.

Finally, we see that the demand for cloud +AI, the accumulation of Baidu intelligent cloud, the technological advancement of Baidu AI represented by Wang Haifeng, and the flow and accumulation of three rivers finally meet, waiting quietly to merge into a torrent.

At the far end of the torrent, it is a grand era in which all industries can easily accelerate intelligent production, a historical transformation from industrial dividends to intelligent dividends, and a cup of tea that is finally drunk by the times.

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