This report is jointly released by Sullivan and Toubao Research Institute, focusing on the analysis of the 2024 Chinese enterprises’ overseas cloud service market, covering aspects such as overseas expansion trends, cloud service demands, and the competitive landscape of cloud vendors.
1. New Trends in Chinese Enterprises Going Global
- Scale Growth: In the first half of 2024, more than 2,000 Chinese listed companies have expanded into overseas markets. The overseas expansion rate of specialized and innovative SMEs in 2024 exceeds 65%. In 2023, China’s outward direct investment flow reached USD 177.29 billion, with a stock of USD 2.96 trillion.
- Changes in Target Markets: No longer limited to North America and Europe, more companies are entering emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, North Africa, South Africa, and countries in the Middle East Gulf region.
- Changes in Industrial Structure and Business Models: Expanding from overseas internet markets to high-end industries, with diversified business models including the establishment of overseas operation centers and overseas mergers and acquisitions.
2. Cloud Service Demands of Chinese Enterprises Going Global
- Technical Demands: Emphasis on the synergy of reliability and agility, high demand for high-availability architecture, serverless architecture, multi-cloud architecture, etc., with attention to data security compliance and intelligent automation technologies. In the future, there will be more focus on flexibility and stability.
- Operational Demands: Value is placed on the local team support, service experience, and global partners of cloud service providers. In the future, attention will be paid to the global deployment fit and pricing strategies of cloud vendors.
3. Competitive Landscape of Cloud Vendors
- General Established Cloud Service Providers: Globally deployed, with large investments in infrastructure construction and mature product portfolios, but with complex products and billing models.
- Leading Local Chinese Cloud Service Providers: Cater to local users, provide overseas expansion experience, have advantages in cost-effectiveness and response speed, and are more open in ecosystem cooperation.
- Cloud Service Providers with Strong Vertical Service Capabilities: Provide vertical services such as enterprise-level applications, often cooperating with other cloud providers to make up for gaps in infrastructure, etc.
4. Cloud Service Products and Development Trends
- Product Portfolio Models: Divided into cloud migration acceleration portfolios, hybrid cloud deployment portfolios, industry solution portfolios, and innovative architecture application portfolios to meet the needs of different enterprises.
- Product Capability Upgrades: Integrating new technologies such as big data and cloud-native to enhance added value, playing a role in different fields to meet enterprise needs.
- Compliance Strategy Optimization: Improving adaptability to the global compliance environment through the construction of compliance management frameworks, etc.
- Cloud Service Ecosystem Construction: The partnership with partners continues to evolve, strengthening global localized support by expanding partners and other means.
- “Intelligent-Intensive” Cloud Services: Integrating large model technologies to provide native AI capabilities on the cloud, achieving two-way development driven by AI.
