Accelerate the release of new infrastructure value with data as the core

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Yu Yingtao, Co-President of Tsinghua Unigroup and CEO of H3C

At present, new infrastructure has become a very important proposition in the field of digital economy construction. Since the beginning of 2020, I have discussed in depth the connotation, extension and trend of change of this proposition with many experts and scholars. As a new driving force in the digital economy era, new infrastructure will take data flow as the core, promote each other with traditional infrastructure "railway, highway and basic infrastructure", enable the intelligent development of all industries, improve the efficiency of social operation and industrial upgrading, and thus promote economic growth and sustainable development.

Focus on the core: A new factor in economic development - data flow

In the great changes brought about by the digital age, in order to ensure the smooth development of society and economy, we must rely on new infrastructure and traditional infrastructure to "dance hand in hand."

Today, a new generation of traditional infrastructure represented by the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the Fuxing High-Speed ​​Railway, the Daxing Airport, and the UHV transmission network is becoming an efficient platform for the flow of traditional production factors such as people, goods, and energy. It is becoming a cornerstone for serving industrial transformation and improving people's quality of life, and helping the social economy move into a new stage of development.

Compared with traditional infrastructure, "new infrastructure" focuses on forming valuable data assets through the flow of data. It aims to solve key issues such as data collection, circulation, storage, governance, and application through the application of a series of cutting-edge technologies, and combine it with the flow of traditional production factors to promote the transformation and reconstruction of all industries.

In our view, the flow of data also has internal and external differences. The internal circulation of data within the organization will reshape business processes and operating models, improve efficiency and reduce costs; the external circulation of data outside the organization will stimulate new innovative value in a more macro dimension, and promote the emergence and innovation of new economy and new business forms. The integration of internal and external circulation will further promote the circulation and value-added of data assets, bringing diversified prosperity to the digital economy.

In this cyclical development process, new infrastructure is like a complex network of blood vessels, and data is the blood that flows through it. The integration of the two will jointly provide sufficient nutrients for social and economic growth.

Today, facing the surging data torrent, the new infrastructure will take digitalization and intelligence as the starting point to promote the iteration and application of innovative technologies related to data flow, and strongly support all industries to cope with the challenges of change and seize the opportunities of the times. For example, 5G and the Internet of Things have built unimpeded highways for data; big data centers allow massive data to be analyzed and stored; the construction of artificial intelligence capabilities makes data governance and data applications smarter, further improving the intelligence level of integrated infrastructure such as transportation and energy, while also helping manufacturing, retail, medical and other industries to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and release new space for growth.

In 2020, "new infrastructure" and "dual circulation" together constitute the dual engines for China's economy to achieve sustainable and high-quality development in the post-epidemic era. New infrastructure will further stimulate the endogenous transformation and reshaping of enterprises, while dual circulation will open up a broader external space for enterprise development. It can be seen that the new infrastructure will take data flow as the core, add digital and intelligent wings to traditional infrastructure, and promote the leap of productivity and market prosperity by stimulating the release of data value.

Adhere to the principle: use-oriented and people-oriented

If there are only a few vehicles on a wide highway, it is undoubtedly a huge waste of traditional infrastructure investment. Similar to traditional infrastructure, the main investors of new infrastructure are also the government and large enterprises. To truly demonstrate its value, it is necessary to put new infrastructure into practice and application, so as to drive the further development of social economy.

Therefore, in the process of promoting new infrastructure, we should pay attention to practicality and follow the concepts and principles of "use-oriented" and "people-oriented". The key point is that new infrastructure should focus on data flow, stimulate new application scenarios, and ultimately achieve intelligence.

Based on the principle of "use-oriented", the foothold of new infrastructure must be attributed to the digital transformation of all industries. This is the best use of new infrastructure and will benefit the industry itself in the long run. For example, digital government will significantly improve the level of urban governance and services, and enhance the satisfaction of the people; the promotion of industrial flexible production can help manufacturing plants to achieve multi-dimensional and fine-grained data collection, analysis and decision-making; focusing on the collection of basic information such as soil, crops, and air in agriculture will achieve accurate monitoring, prediction and fine management of agricultural production factors; smart medical care will bring low-latency networks and intelligent applications to the medical industry, improve the allocation of medical resources, and improve the efficiency and quality of patients' medical treatment...

Considering various new infrastructure application scenarios, I believe that the new smart city will be the culmination of "new infrastructure" and an important tool for governments at all levels to promote new infrastructure. Through the construction of the underlying terminal, network, and cloud infrastructure, coupled with the integrated big data platform and industry smart applications, we will build the "foundation" of the entire smart city and form the city's digital brain to ensure "coordination in peacetime and strong linkage in wartime". Taking this year's epidemic prevention and control as an example, various departments have linked up to connect health code data, synchronized identity, historical itinerary, visual perception and other data applications, effectively supported the tracing, monitoring and situation analysis of the epidemic, promoted the judgment of the epidemic situation and the deployment of epidemic prevention and control, effectively fought the spread of COVID-19, and provided a strong guarantee for accelerating the resumption of work and production. It also allows us to see a future with more refined urban governance, more convenient urban services, and more prosperous industrial development.

Mission: Empowering new infrastructure and promoting intelligence

According to the "New Infrastructure Development White Paper" by CCID Think Tank, by 2025, direct investment in new infrastructure in areas such as 5G infrastructure, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and industrial Internet will reach 10 trillion yuan, driving cumulative investment to exceed 17 trillion yuan. The trend has arrived, and many industries will benefit from it, but this requires all sectors of society to participate together, clearly define their positioning, and work together.

In this great change, two main roles are involved: one is the government-led promoter of new infrastructure, which is mainly responsible for top-level design, policy environment, project planning, overall coordination, etc. The other is the participants who undertake the investment, construction, operation and use of new infrastructure. Among the participants in the new infrastructure, there are two forces: manufacturers that provide ICT infrastructure, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, as well as technologies, products, applications, solutions and services related to various industries. As enablers of the "new infrastructure", they will further promote digital industrialization. Among all industries, organizations that use digital and intelligent technologies to transform and upgrade are the users of the "new infrastructure", and they will jointly accelerate the process of industrial digitalization.

For a long time, H3C Group, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, has played the role of a promoter of digital industrialization and an enabler of industrial digitalization. It has built a full-stack, end-to-end digital infrastructure that can provide comprehensive support for the data, computing power, and algorithms required for intelligence, realize on-demand scheduling of computing power, smooth flow of data, and agile and efficient algorithms. It not only ensures the efficient and smooth "data flow", but also can capture the essence of the "data flow" in a timely manner to meet the intelligent business scenarios under the digital economy.

As the intelligent transformation deepens, H3C Group is currently implementing the "AI in ALL" intelligent strategy to fully embed artificial intelligence technology into its own intelligent digital platform, making products and solutions more intelligent, while combining industry smart applications to enable customers' business and operations to be more intelligent. To this end, H3C Group has proposed the "Digital Brain Plan" since 2019, closely integrating its own intelligent digital platform with partners' industry smart applications to better help customers in all industries accelerate digital transformation. In 2019, H3C built their own digital brains for 1,806 customers and successfully implemented a number of key projects such as "Smart Lianyungang" and "Digital Transformation of West China Hospital".

All rivers flow into the sea, and this is the general trend. In the tide of "new infrastructure", every enterprise and organization should find its position in the new infrastructure system as soon as possible, actively participate in the new infrastructure, fully release the value of data flow, and let intelligence and digitalization more fully empower social operation and economic development, making our cities and lives better, and making the changes of the times worth looking forward to. (The author is the co-president of Tsinghua Unigroup and the CEO of H3C)