Rebirth of England.

Chapter 793 WWS Cloud Service

In fact, there is not much gap in mobile payment technology, whether in China or overseas.

As for why the gap between the two sides is so huge after ten years?

First of all, in terms of demand, it is true that mobile payment only requires a mobile phone - a mobile phone is something everyone must carry when going out. But in terms of paperless payment, Europe and the United States already have a complete credit card payment system. Whether it is a large shopping mall or a roadside shop, they have already popularized related card swiping machines, which is relatively convenient. Even in many cities in Europe and the United States, checks can also be used very conveniently.

They usually don't need to carry much cash when they go out, just a credit card.

In China, the development in this area is slightly behind that in Europe and the United States. Only some shopping malls and specialty stores allow card payments. Ordinary stores and roadside stalls do not have such conditions.

Therefore, it is easier to promote mobile payment in China.

In terms of resistance, it is precisely because the relevant credit card and check businesses in Europe and the United States are very complete, and there is a whole line of related supporting companies and institutions to provide services for these, so the promotion of mobile payment will also be resisted by these companies that rely on the credit card payment system.

When mobile payments were not popular, the result was obvious when banks and credit card companies were asked to choose between mobile payments and their traditional payment customers.

This has led to slow development of mobile payments in Europe and the United States, and there is great resistance.

But no matter what, Barron knows that mobile payment will become a trend. In the future, it will develop relatively well in many countries in Europe and the United States. Although it is not as popular as in China, the growth in its share is still very impressive.

And Barron himself has relevant resources, such as Standard Chartered Bank, a subsidiary of Standard Chartered Merrill Lynch, which he controls, and some American banks in which he holds shares and can exert influence, all of which can support KlarnaPay.

This is also the main reason why KlarnaPay's share of mobile payments can grow rapidly, although at present, the total amount of mobile payments is still far behind traditional credit card and check payment methods.

The current proportion of touch-screen smartphone users is not that large, and the popularization of mobile payment is not something that can be achieved overnight. Even in China, it was not until 2015 that mobile payment could be considered relatively popular. After that, Alipay and WeChat began to heavily subsidize offline payments in order to compete for the mobile payment market.

This not only made the Chinese people accustomed to using Alipay and WeChat to pay for daily offline consumption, but also established the situation of the two major players in China's mobile payment field.

Therefore, even in China, where mobile payment is developing the fastest, it will still take four years to popularize mobile payment, not to mention Europe and the United States where the old card swiping habits are more stubborn.

In this regard, they still have time, but now is the time to plan ahead.

But another more urgent thing for Woaw is the launch of their cloud service.

The earliest cloud service was launched by Amazon, which launched AWS in 2006. Google launched the PaaS service App Engine in 2008, and Microsoft also launched its cloud service Azure last year.

Globally, Amazon's AWS occupies the vast majority of the market share in cloud services, with more than half of cloud services belonging to them. However, after Google and Microsoft entered the market, the two sides also began to compete fiercely.

In fact, there are differences between Amazon and Microsoft in their cloud service businesses.

Amazon Cloud mainly focuses on IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), which is the infrastructure service of cloud computing. This means that Amazon needs to build data centers in various regions, purchase servers, storage and other infrastructure, and then rent out these computing powers to customers - the essence of IaaS business is to rent out servers.

If you want to achieve continuous business growth, you have to keep purchasing new servers and expanding data center clusters. This is a very asset-intensive business and the investment will be relatively large. When there are not many competitors, you can still make good profits. Once more competitors join, the profits will inevitably be diluted.

From the customer's perspective, the motivation for using IaaS services is very clear, which is to reduce costs because renting is cheaper than buying.

Moreover, because computing power is universal, just like electricity, there is no difference for customers. Of course, they will use the cheaper one.

This is why the future cloud service market will be dominated by giants competing with each other. After all, on the one hand, these Internet giants themselves have the need for cloud services. On the other hand, they are more able to afford the corresponding investment, have economies of scale, and can survive future price wars.

Unlike Amazon, which mainly focuses on IaaS and will take the low-price route in the future, Microsoft, as a veteran software giant, entered the cloud computing industry from PaaS (Platform as a Service) from the beginning.

PaaS means that it not only provides customers with cloud computing infrastructure, but also configures operating systems, middleware, runtimes, etc. on the infrastructure, thereby building a software development platform. Customers develop their own applications on the platform and only need to focus on their own business logic without having to worry about the underlying layer.

Even in the future, in addition to PaaS, Microsoft is also vigorously developing SaaS, which is often referred to as "software as a service" in the future. Customers don't even need to develop applications themselves, they can directly use software and data deployed in the cloud.

To use an analogy, cloud computing vendors are like landlords renting out houses. IaaS is like a rough-finished house with water, electricity, and gas connections, PaaS is like a fully furnished house, and SaaS is a ready-to-move-in serviced apartment. As the services provided get better and better, the fees charged are of course getting higher and higher.

For Woaw, before encountering Microsoft, Baron had already instructed them to set up a cloud computing-related research center and invest in the development of cloud technology.

Their upcoming WWS (Woaw Web Services) will first be used to meet the cloud service needs of themselves and other industries controlled by Barron.

For example, Woaw's own user photo storage, YouTube's video storage, and related needs of companies such as Argos.com, DailyVedio, and O2 Telecom.

Of course, because Woaw does not have such a strong software development foundation as Microsoft, WWS will choose Amazon AWS's IaaS approach at the beginning...

However, next, they will also try to cooperate with companies that are more proficient in software, such as IBM, Oracle, SAP and Penguin, to improve their WWS services and transition to PaaS.

"Next, we will first invest 50 billion US dollars to build new cloud computing data centers in North America, Europe and East Asia, and prepare to double the number of our data centers within five years..."

Baron knew that the $50 billion that Khalid mentioned would only be the first investment that Woaw would make in cloud computing data centers, and that investments would continue to increase in the future.

For example, Microsoft plans to invest more than $150 billion in the purchase and construction of cloud computing data centers within five years...

Soon, the arms race among the giants in this field will become increasingly fierce.

(End of this chapter)