I. Main Businesses Provided by Internet ISPs and Business Revenue
With the development of broadband and the deepening of globalization, the development of China's Internet business applications is basically the same as the development of international mainstream business applications, and China's ISPs stand at the same starting point with ISPs in advanced countries in terms of their business provision capabilities. International mainstream Internet services are all applied in China. Table 1 lists the major Internet applications provided by Chinese ISPs/ICPs.
However, the main Internet applications offered by China's local ISPs have Chinese characteristics. For example, the development of online game business and instant messaging business in China is significantly better than the global average.
Chinese ISPs' overall industry revenue in 2005 was around RMB 30 billion. The overall industry revenue has been growing rapidly, with a growth rate of about 40% from 2004 to 2005. Table 2 shows the revenues of typical ISPs in China. The growth rate of ISPs' business revenues varies greatly, with an average growth rate of more than 30%.
The Internet's original way of providing services for free used to drive the development of the Internet as a feature and advantage of the Internet. However, if everything is provided free of charge, the Internet's ability to provide business will be difficult to rapidly enhance the Internet in a variety of specialized services, such as the financial industry, publishing industry, etc., the application and development of the Internet will be limited, so the world's ISPs in the process of their own development is also actively exploring the business model of the business model of the provision of business and profitability model.
The development of ISP companies varies greatly, and from the viewpoint of the business models operated by ISP companies in China, there are the following three basic business models:
●The first one is the big and comprehensive business model, in which ISPs provide a wide range of Internet services. For example, in the 1990s, Yahoo was a representative of this approach.
●The second is a model that focuses on its main business. For example, Tencent focuses on instant messaging, and Nasdaq-listed Ruijia is an ISP specializing in the hotel industry.
●The third type is the integrated business model. Big portals like Sina, for example, run a variety of Internet businesses, including online games and online advertising services, in addition to their main news and information services, and profit from these non-primary businesses.
Most Chinese ISPs have adopted a comprehensive information service model, focusing on their core business while providing other Internet information services. Through this business model, ISPs are able to expand their business operations, expand their sources of profitability, enrich their operating model, and enhance their core competitiveness.
The business model adopted by Chinese ISPs is related to the competitive landscape of China's Internet application market. As the competition in each Internet business field is very fierce, the competition pattern may change at any time, thus causing most Chinese ISPs to focus on comprehensively consolidating and enhancing their core business capabilities and raising the threshold of entry for business services, ISPs ensure their monopoly, dominance or advantageous position through this development mode, creating opportunities for their own development.
In addition, most Chinese ISPs cooperate with domestic telecom operators. China Telecom launched the Internet Star cooperation platform, which has become a good soil for many ISPs to seek cooperation with China Telecom **** win, ISPs in China Telecom's network platform to provide Internet business services, not only to promote the development of the broadband industry chain, but also to protect their own users and business development, and promote their own good operation. The mobile dream network platform constructed by China Mobile is a good platform for many ISPs providing mobile Internet services to cooperate with China Mobile. Generally speaking, traditional telecom operators will share business revenue with ISPs to *** enjoy the benefits. This cooperation model has brought about the development and extension of the communication industry chain, and the distribution of value has gradually moved towards a reasonable balance. Although this model is more successful at home and abroad, but in the whole process of business activities, the traditional telecom operators still occupy a major control position, China's telecom operators are adjusting this mode of sharing, "50 50" new model heralds the emergence of China's ISPs have begun a new round of adjustment of the operating model.
While content has gradually become an important feature of China's Internet business market, the obvious advantage of ISPs in content has not fundamentally changed the dominant force in the industry chain, and network resources and user resources are still important factors in determining who is the protagonist in the Internet business industry chain.
Internet Alipay, WeChat, banks, securities companies, financial management, stocks, public security, military, government agencies, armed police, all belong to the network information technology
Two, cloud services
Service billing items
The other key factor that determines the true cost of the service is the type of service required. For some businesses, a so-called cloud service may simply be server hosting, dedicated server rental, or running applications in the cloud. For others, cloud services may be cloud-based data backup, business continuity maintenance, or basic storage hosting.
For a wide range of users, the easiest way to figure out cloud computing services is to focus on the top service offerings. Most cloud service providers categorize their services into three basic types: servers in the cloud, cloud storage, cloud workstations, and cloud applications. Each service has its own billing method.
Servers in the cloud come in two main forms: virtual servers and physical servers. In other words, you can either buy usage time on a virtual server (where you **** with other people to enjoy the physical hardware) or on a dedicated server (where you are the only tenant of that server). What's shown in Table 1 is how cloud services are billed:
Comparison of billing methods for the three major IaaS cloud services
The whole picture is really a comparison of how different cloud service providers price their services and bill them. Each of the providers listed in the graphic levies additional charges for a number of extra services and features. In addition, the price of each service varies with the length of the agreement, the total bandwidth requirement, or the size of the storage required. In many cases, users are able to bargain with the provider.
Different types of services
Not that all cloud service providers are the same, and if you take a closer look at the differences between the providers and the way they each handle the needs of their users, you'll see that the differences are clear. To give you a comparison, we picked three of the most well-known cloud architecture providers:
GoGrid puts load-balancing services in their server offerings at no extra charge, plus they offer 20GB of storage for free;
Rackspace uses a completely different billing mechanism, where they reduce the cost per billion dollars as usage grows, they reduce the cost per gigabyte of bandwidth. In addition, the company offers a free backup service on some virtual servers;
Amazon offers discounts on most of its services as usage increases, but charges a fee for both enabling and terminating storage services.
If you consider the simplest concept of a cloud storage service, the difference between these billing methods and provider operations is obvious (Figure 2). Again, this chart is just a comparison of how different providers bill. Like any other cloud service, the price of a cloud storage service can be affected by the length of the agreement, the total bandwidth requirement or rather the size of the storage capacity required. In addition, there's plenty of room for bargaining on the price of these services.
Comparison of billing methods for the three major IaaS cloud services
For those using their server hosting service, GoGrid initially offers 20GB of free storage, and they only offer cloud storage for server hosting users. Uniquely, GoGrid's service offers discounts as users increase the amount of storage capacity they purchase.GoGrid's cloud storage service is offered on a rationed basis, and so far doesn't offer a Web service API for starting or stopping other commands.
Rackspace is trying to make billing for its storage services as simple as possible. They offer a sliding scale model for cloud storage service purchases, with the unit price of the service decreasing as the total amount increases. Additionally, they don't charge for access if the file size exceeds 250KB.
Amazon S3 does not charge for deleted data, and also offers discounts based on the increase in the total amount of storage required. For companies that are trying to stabilize their prices, they offer pricing contracts. For some larger file transfer companies, they recommend using their input and output services, which can save money.
Ideally, the billing model for cloud computing services should be no different than choosing the storage capabilities and server computing resources needed. In fact, most IT managers find this ideal difficult to realize. They have to carefully consider "hidden costs," or changes in billing rates, to determine the true cost of a service.
The bigger challenge comes in the form of "non-technical" factors that users must take into account independently of the negotiated terms and conditions, or hidden in the SLA agreement.
The trick to solving this problem is to write down the total cost of each service for each contract period in clear and precise terms so that the true total budget can be understood. [5]