The cloud service unit of international tech leader Tencent is sharpening its focus on facilitating businesses focused on expanding their reach to China and giving a boost to the consumer-to-business (C2B) segment while demand for its services has skyrocketed following the digital transformation trend.
Tencent Cloud is one of the key players in the global cloud market, supported by more than 20 years of Tencent's experience and expertise in technology innovation in various fronts, such as games, audio and video technologies, social communications and fintech services.
CHINA CONNECT SOLUTION
"Tencent Cloud's business growth surged in 2020 and remains strong in 2021," Poshu Yeung, senior vice-president of Tencent Cloud International, told the Bangkok Post in an interview.
"Our overseas business growth is an important strategic area for Tencent Cloud, and we've booked an over 100% year-on-year growth, keeping the momentum in 2021 with a high growth rate in overseas markets."
At present, Tencent Cloud's extensive content delivery network has over 2,800 global acceleration nodes across more than 70 countries and regions. Tencent Cloud is also China's 1st and world's 5th company with over 1 million servers.
Tencent Cloud's security standard and competitive services have been recognised by various top global consulting firms, including 2020 & 2021 Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services, in which Tencent Cloud is included as a niche player in the Magic Quadrant Research.
Mr Yeung said Tencent Cloud can support "China Connect" and "Go Global" solutions among businesses by helping overseas businesses to enter the China market and help Chinese enterprises to go global.
Mr Yeung said Tencent Cloud has been one of the preferred partners for many overseas businesses to connect with China, due to Tencent's over 20 years of experience in the market with deep understanding of Chinese consumers need, as well as capabilities to help enterprises to set up business in China through every step under the company's one-stop China Connect solution.
"Tencent Cloud 'China Connect' solution aims to provide everything enterprises and businesses require to expand their footprint in the country," said Mr Yeung.
'C2B2C' DRIVE
According to Mr Yeung, C2B strategy is the main advantage of Tencent when it comes to industrial internet.
"On the C-side (consumer), we have major social platforms, WeChat, Weixin and QQ, which reach more than one billion users, and provide valuable local market knowledge and operational experience," he said.
Tencent's C-side experience and capabilities have proven valuable for companies entering the market. For example, the company provides connectors such as Official Accounts, Mini Programs, digital payment services on its Weixin platform and WeCom (enterprise version of Weixin), so that enterprises can better serve users, improve the efficiency of supply and demand matching, and finally realise the closed loop of C2B2C, he noted.
"We aim to lower the threshold for enterprises to connect with users, offer more online and offline resources and cover a larger market. Our unique C2B advantage and strategy create value to enterprises by leveraging Tencent's unique digital ecosystem, which is well-integrated with our cloud computing offerings, ultimately bringing a better service experience to our users, especially for those enterprises who are looking to expand their business in the China market," said Mr Yeung.
GO GLOBAL
The company also pivots towards establishing a comprehensive cloud partner ecosystem by integrating partner products and services into Tencent Cloud vertical solutions, promoting partners' products and services through international marketplace and sharing opportunity and joint marketing with regional partners.
It also gears up for global infrastructure and network expansion. Tencent Cloud's internet data centres (IDC) have now spanned across 27 regions and 68 availability zones.
Tencent Cloud has announced the plan to launch its first Middle East and North Africa internet data centre hub in Bahrain, and launched four new IDCs in Bangkok (two in the capital at present), Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Tencent Cloud also established its first IDC in Jakarta, Indonesia in April, and its third IDC in Singapore.
Tencent Cloud is strengthening its business support teams and partnership in local markets, including resellers, development partners, service providers and consulting partners, to better support the businesses in local markets, Mr Yeung said.
KEY SEGMENTS
In terms of targeted industries, Mr Yeung said Tencent Cloud sees a strong growth and potential in financial services, e-commerce, pan-entertainment, audio & video businesses and gaming.
"We continue to utilise our infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings to assist digitalisation for public services and traditional industries," said Mr Yeung.
The videolisation trend, he said, also offers more opportunities for our video cloud solutions. Tencent Cloud has reached 90% of the audio and video customers in China and according to IDC, Tencent Cloud ranked first in China in terms of video cloud solution revenue.
"We are also deepening connections between our communication and productivity SaaS tools (WeCom, Tencent Meeting/VooV Meeting and Tencent Docs) to support better collaboration within enterprises, as well as between enterprises and their users," he said.
FUTURE MISSION
Mr Yeung said Tencent sets its sights on achieving its vision and mission -- Value for Users, Tech for Good. It wants to provide the best cloud technology services to businesses all around the globe.
"We definitely want to expand our coverage in the world like Latin America, Middle East, Europe, North Africa. Moving forward, we will strengthen the team in the area where the data centre is located to provide customers with more personal services," he said.
With digitalisation becoming more critical since the pandemic, Tencent Cloud will provide digital production tools to help enterprises resume their businesses and production quickly and efficiently, while supporting the massive demand for online learning, remote working, and home entertainment, he said. "We have a lot of business within the fields of finance and education," he said. "For example, we created virtual customer service centres for banks with our partners, and many online classrooms and SaaS services around the world have adopted our audio and video technology."
According to a report from Research and Markets, the global cloud computing market stood at US$289.25 billion in 2020 and is forecast to see the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.79% by 2026, driven by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, 5G, use of real-time analytics enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
More organisations are adopting cloud computing services as they provide insights into partnering tactics, go-to-market approaches, investments, alliance and acquisition strategies, and best operational practices, he said.
Mr Yeung is aware of the cloud market competition and Tencent Cloud will focus on its advantages.
"For example, we have been promoting the development of audio and video technology, from Tencent Video to WeTV, live broadcasts to on-demand, from the PC era to the mobile era, from live entertainment broadcasts to live e-sports broadcasts, from business-to-consumer (B2C) to business-to-business (B2B), from establishing a platform to setting the standard," he said.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION DRIVE
According to Mr Yeung, businesses need to adapt to the disrupted business conditions to ensure their sustainable growth in the new normal.
Building a hybrid multicloud digital platform can help organisations introduce new business models and drive new revenue through the collaboration and co-creation of joint offerings with partners in an ecosystem, he said.
Tencent Cloud is also sharing an essential guidance for businesses to successfully build a digital cloud platform as more enterprises are pivoting towards digital transformation.
According to him, deploying a scalable cloud infrastructure allows businesses to scale resources up or down at anytime to meet the demand. Adopting an agile distribution platform enable users to have access from anywhere and organisations to monitor and manage.
