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Next, run the machine and test the samples.

The control group is several mainstream servers on the market, five domestic and five foreign. The price of foreign products is generally around US$4,000, and the price of domestic brands is basically between 15,000 and 20,000 yuan.

The cost of this server developed by Ziweiyun is only 5,000 yuan.

After testing, it was found that the performance of these models of servers is actually about the same. They are in the same range and are mid-range and low-end servers in the industry.

The most embarrassing thing is that after the machine scores were ranked, Ziweiyun's server ranked third in the same grade, and ZTE's server ranked second to last.

Mr. Shi's face looked a little strange.

If I had known earlier I wouldn't have made this trip.

For the sake of his company's face, Mr. Shi had no choice but to reveal a few company secrets, coughed and said, "The market price of ZTE's server is 18,000, and the minimum for large-volume orders can be as low as 14,000. But if you only Calculating the material cost, the cost is actually not that high, about 7,000 yuan.”

Zhou Buqi quickly spoke for him, "Yes, the profit margin of this kind of product is usually extremely high."

Mr. Shi has a good understanding of the server field and gave a very comprehensive explanation, "In fact, the basic costs of domestic servers are almost the same. The main competition is to see who has good technology and high quality. The reason why the material cost will be the same as yours." There is a difference because ZTE's products are branded machines, while yours is an assembled machine."

Zhou Buqi suddenly realized, "It's just like assembling a computer or a branded computer! If you assemble it yourself, you can assemble a computer with better performance for the same money. Because branded computers have brand attributes, they have to take care of better appearance design. A lot of cost is wasted on unnecessary accessories.”

Mr. Shi said: "That's pretty much what it means. Another point is that ZTE's servers need to be sold globally. It is inevitable that there will be a backlog of inventory and a greater investment in after-sales service. These need to be included in the cost of the product. . Our product, including all expenses, costs about 11,000 yuan, and the lowest price in the market is 14,000 yuan."

Ziweiyun's self-developed server does not have so many troubles because it is self-sufficient.

Produce as much as you need.

There is no such thing as inventory.

Moreover, it is a modular design, making later maintenance more convenient and cost-effective.

ZTE's brand of phones cannot be designed in a modular manner.

Not only that, in order to sell ZTE's servers, it also needs to maintain a large sales team, as well as provide pre-sales consultation and after-sales services. Especially when competing for orders from competing companies, it also has to spend a large amount of public relations expenses.

All in all, all expenses will ultimately be placed on the product.

Ziweiyun's self-developed servers are not troubled by these factors at all. The savings in these various links actually reduce the cost of the server.

The material cost of ZTE's servers is 7,000 yuan, the total cost is 11,000 yuan, and the purchase price in large quantities is 14,000 yuan.

The material cost of Ziweiyun's server is 5,000 yuan. In the end, the server has to be moved into the cloud data center and installed. The total cost may be only 5,500 yuan.

This is equivalent to saving 10,000 yuan on one server!

Servers are fast-moving consumer goods in the cloud computing industry, and their life cycles are generally 5-7 years. When the time is up, they will be scrapped. Keep iterating, throwing away the old and replacing it with the new. Ziweiyun’s plan is to build a super cloud computing platform with 5 million servers around the world within 10 years.

After 10 years, including continuous elimination and continuous production and deployment, Ziweiyun may have produced a total of more than 10 million servers.

One unit saves 10,000 yuan, and 10 million units saves 100 billion yuan!

This is what self-study means.

Why are Huawei's profit margins so high and Lenovo's profit margins so low even though their products are selling well all over the world? The most important factor is that Huawei's products have more self-developed attributes.

If you develop it yourself, the cost will be lower.

The costs saved are future profits.

After visiting Ziweiyun's self-developed server, Mr. Shi was still in a good mood, although there were some embarrassing episodes.

Now I feel at ease!

Ziweiyun's server can only be used by oneself and is not competitive at all in the market. That kind of modular model cannot be commercially used normally at all. Only when matched with Ziweiyun's proprietary server cluster processing system can it achieve the greatest effect. The threshold is too high.

This way, there is no need to worry.

The current low-end and mid-range server market has become a red ocean market, and all parties are fighting bloody battles. If Ziweixing also gets involved, something bad might happen.

The legend of Boss Xiao Zhou is unknown to everyone in the industry.

As long as he wants to do anything, there is nothing he can't do.

Fortunately, Ziweiyun's server can only be used by itself and cannot be sold commercially. This is a good thing for the entire server market.

Mr. Shi was about to leave, and Zhou Buqi led a group of senior executives to send him downstairs.

As they walked, Mr. Shi said with a smile: "Domestic technology is already very mature in the research and development of mid- to low-end servers. Your modular idea is a more advanced innovation."

Zhou Buqi waved his hand and said, "It's mainly for our own cloud computing services, not market-oriented innovation."

Mr. Shi nodded, "Those foreign server giants are not having a good time right now."

"Huh? What's wrong?"

"It's not competitive. The reviewer just now saw that ZTE's $2,000 server has similar performance to IBM's $4,000 server."

"It really is!"

Zhou Buqi pretended to be suddenly enlightened and almost laughed.

Similar performance?

In the evaluation just now, only Ziweiyun's self-developed server ranked third among the top five, and the others were all foreign brands.

Among them, the one that tops the list is IBM's server.

ZTE’s server, which was also evaluated at the same time, was second to last.

Of course, the performance gap between the same grades cannot cover up the advantage of the gap in price. Among servers with the same specifications, ZTE is indeed inferior to IBM, but it is cheaper!

The price is only half that of IBM!

Mr. Shi said enthusiastically: "For servers with the same specifications, the cost of domestic servers is much lower than that of foreign brand servers. This creates a huge price advantage for domestic servers."

Zhou Buqi understood what he meant, "Doesn't that mean that in the server market, those international giants are going to stop? They are all gone? They will be replaced by our domestic servers?"

Mr. Shi quickly corrected him, "I'm talking about mid- to low-end servers."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Yes."

Mr. Shi said: "In the market of mid-to-low-end servers, foreign companies have seriously lost their competitiveness. For products with the same performance, domestically produced products have lower prices; for products with the same price, domestically produced products have better performance. Even IBM cannot compete with them. Yes, I heard that we are going to divest the mid- to low-end server business.”

Zhou Buqi felt the same way, "How proud and proud!"

Mr. Shi said solemnly: "However, in the field of high-end servers, there is still a big gap between China and them. Even with the same amount of investment, the products we produce are not as good as theirs."

Zhou Buqi said: "Take your time and develop slowly. The country has unstoppable talent advantages and cost advantages. If one day the country also masters high-end server technology, then sooner or later this market will belong to domestic server manufacturers. There is no need to rush and we must comply with the development laws of technology and market.”

There is no such thing as overtaking in corners, only overtaking in corners.

It must be accumulated slowly and iterated slowly.

It develops slowly from the order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... and gets higher and higher; if the accumulation in the early stage is not enough, and you want to jump from 1 to 100, then you can only cheat.

ZTE is one of the rare excellent companies in China that is willing to work hard on technology, not much worse than Huawei. It is out of such respect that Zhou Buqi attaches great importance to Mr. Shi's visit.

Mr. Shi got in the car and left.

Only then could Zhou Buqi say something behind closed doors to the senior executives of Ziweiyun, "No, the cost is still high. We must find a way to keep it down!"

"ah?"

Lu Guangkun was slightly startled.

Others are used to it, and the big boss's requirements are never simple.

Zhou Buqi asked: "What is the localization rate of our server?"

Lu Guangkun said: "85%-90%."

Zhou Buqi said: "In other words, 90% of domestic spare parts account for 50% of the material cost; the remaining 10% of imported spare parts account for the remaining 50%."

Lu Guangkun was helpless, "There is nothing we can do about it. The country cannot keep up with those semiconductor products and can only import them."

"This is not a long-term solution." Zhou Buqi shook his head, "In the future, Ziwei Cloud's global server deployment may reach 10 million units, and the number of new servers that will be scrapped and updated every year may be 2 million units. This How big an investment is it?”

Lu Guangkun opened his eyes wide, "You mean..."

On the other side, Zhou Feng had already spoken on behalf of the big boss, "Indeed, we must find substitutes for these imported chips. Otherwise, half of the cost will be spent on imports."

Zhou Buqi asked: "How is the difficulty? Is it big?"

Zhou Feng looked at Dr. Wang Jian, "Is it okay? Server chips are less difficult than computer chips, and computer chips are less difficult than mobile phone chips."

Chief Technology Officer Dr. Wang Jian made the final decision, "It's just a mid- to low-end server chip. If you really make up your mind to do it, you can get results within three years! We are self-sufficient and not for external commercial use. This will be a huge R\u0026D effort." Advantage."

Zhou Feng said: "I think it's okay. What we develop is a dedicated chip, specially designed for our self-developed servers. This will be less difficult to develop than the general-purpose chips in the market."