On May 16, 2019, the United States officially included Huawei in the “Entity List”. Without the permission of the US Department of Commerce, all US companies are prohibited from supplying products to Huawei.
Shortly after the ban was issued, various teams from Huawei’s R&D began to intensively review and sort out, and identified the US-related technologies Huawei used in software development tool components and single products at that time.
Soon, the R&D team discovered that among the batch of products and tools involving American technology, some had been directly cut off from supply by the United States, some had been stopped for maintenance, and some might appear on the next cutoff list at any time. How to replace sanctioned tools as soon as possible, launch self-research, and realize independent innovation has become a top priority.
“It is not only necessary to ensure uninterrupted business continuity and change the wheels while flying the plane, but also to enable the entire software development system to run on Huawei Cloud, so as to realize the independent controllability of the whole stack from the bottom chip to the upper application.” A person at the time The participating experts recalled to Leifeng.com. And all of this has to race against time, and the acceptance will be completed in early 2021.
The replacement will be completed in just one and a half years. Is it possible? Why did this group of people dare to issue such a military order?
The above-mentioned experts told Leifeng.com that the determination and confidence come from Huawei’s continuous investment in the field of software self-development for more than ten years. As early as 2011, Huawei began to gradually carry out self-research and replacement for outsourced software, from the surface-level interface operation flow to the lower-level data flow. By 2019, a lot of accumulation and preparations had been made. Only then can we dare and make the promise of quick replacement.
Forewarned is forearmed, without prejudging the waste. In fact, Huawei regarded software development tools as a “root technology” a long time ago. As a company that has ranked first in China’s top 100 software companies for 20 consecutive years, Huawei’s research and development expenses have reached 845 billion in the past 10 years, a large part of which has been invested in software research and development. Behind this “heavy investment” is inseparable from Huawei’s long-term industry insight into China’s software development, as well as its self-research attempts to plan ahead and start first.
Castles in the Air: The Hidden Pain of China’s Software Industry
Are software development tools a root technology? According to Xu Feng, Director of Huawei Cloud PaaS Service Product Department, there has been a period of debate within Huawei on this issue before.
The so-called “root technology” refers to the technology that can derive and support one or more technology clusters, and continue to provide nourishment for the entire technology tree. For example, operating systems, databases, middleware, and programming languages are all well-known root technologies in the industry. Compared with these techniques, the “root” attributes of software development tools seem less intuitive and urgent.
But in fact, if you look at it from the perspective of software ecology, you will find that even if an operating system is developed, if there are no flourishing various applications, development tools and developer communities on it, the construction of the operating system will not be truly successful in the end.
In view of this, Huawei has reached a consensus on this issue very early: in order to achieve overall leapfrog development in the software field and not be controlled by others, the root of software development tools must be deeply rooted and firmly established.
In particular, the 516 ban incident gave Huawei a personal experience of this.
“After 516, everyone deeply realized the feeling of being ‘stuck’ on software development tools.” Many Huawei people still remember this.
Software development tools are to software, just like lithography machines are to chips, they are indispensable key production tools. If this basic software is sanctioned, it will be like the root of the software being restricted and controlled, and the survival foundation of the entire software industry will also be impacted.
With this awareness, looking back at the status quo of domestic software development tools, you will find that the situation is worrying.
At present, software development tools are presenting a situation of ice and fire in both overseas and domestic markets. On the one hand, the global market, especially in Europe and the United States, is in full swing.
The first is the overall market size. According to a foreign industry analysis report, in 2022, the global software development tools market size will be about 5.1 billion US dollars, and it is expected to grow to about 11.5 billion US dollars by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.5%. .
Secondly, in terms of share distribution, North America has a market share of more than 50%, followed by Europe with a market share of over 20%, while China and other countries combined have a market share of less than 30%.
Looking closer, taking the United States as an example, in the field of global operating systems and basic software (including desktops, databases, cloud operating systems, tool software, etc.) in 2020, the business revenue of the United States alone will reach 0.81 trillion US dollars, accounting for to 4/5 of the global proportion. The world’s number one player, Microsoft, currently has revenues in software development tools, ecology and related derivatives that have already surpassed the Windows product line, supporting most of Microsoft’s current market value.
But looking back at China, in software development, which is a racing track with thousands of sails, our country’s market share is still very limited.
Not only in the world, but even in the local market, the share of basic software in my country is very small. According to research data from the China Software Association, the current domestic market share of domestic software is only 5%, and the domestic market share of domestic operating systems is only 4%. There is huge room for localization alternatives.
Although the country is also struggling to catch up in recent years, from 2000 to 2020, the overall scale of China’s software market has achieved a 135-fold increase, which seems to show a trend of blooming, but in fact, there are few core applications and technical bases are difficult to control independently. The overall development of the industry is still a castle in the air, a tree without roots.
Especially in terms of software development tools, a large number of software companies directly purchase commercial tools from the United States, and the domestic software tool chain relies heavily on open source technology packaging. Once sanctioned by foreign countries, the open source technology platform is banned, which will directly endanger the entire domestic software industry chain.
And similar sanctions have already occurred.
Since 2019, more than 600 Chinese companies and institutions have been included in the U.S. “Entity List.” The sanctions and control of related products and technologies have become a major hidden danger that has caused production stagnation and threatened survival and safety. This has made more and more enterprises realize that only by controlling the autonomy and control of software development tools in their own hands can the lifeline of enterprises be guaranteed.
At the same time, in recent years, modern software development has increasingly adopted the development model on the cloud. For sensitive and core software, if you use an open source code hosting platform such as Github, Gitlab, etc., the development code needs to be transferred to the server of the US company. Whether the process of data production, storage, transmission, access, use, and destruction is safe will change. In extreme cases, related sensitive data may even be viewed and used, bringing unimaginable unknown risks.
The situation is not grim. Therefore, in recent years, the country has also continuously raised the priority of independent innovation in the software information industry, making it an important support for the strategy of strengthening the country with science and technology.
The “Science and Technology Progress Law of the People’s Republic of China” points out that it is necessary to comprehensively promote industrialization and large-scale application, focus on breakthroughs in key software, promote the software industry to become bigger and stronger, and improve key software technology innovation and supply capabilities. “Promoting the upgrading of the software industry chain and concentrating on tackling basic software” is also listed as the first of the five major tasks in the “14th Five-Year Plan” software and information technology service development plan.
The policy is good, but if domestic software tools want to rise and break through, they still need to cross a series of historical gaps.
As we all know, the information technology industry in Europe and the United States started early. After decades of advanced development, the entire digital ecosystem has flourished, from underlying chips to operating systems, development tools, and various application software services. For example, in software production tools On the other hand, companies and platforms such as Microsoft, GitHub, and Java in the United States are already very powerful.
All of these put China’s information industry at a latecomer disadvantage since its birth: externally, it had to grab meat from established foreign businessmen in a tight competitive space; Facing the dilemma of difficulty in recruiting people and difficulty in making profits.
Therefore, although China’s software industry has basically built a relatively complete structural context after years of catching up, it is still very weak overall. How to speed up to catch up, get rid of the bottleneck crisis as soon as possible, and realize self-control has become a key issue faced by all walks of life in the domestic industry.
Putting the “root” firmly, Huawei decided to eat crabs first
According to several product managers of HUAWEI CLOUD, during the development process of HUAWEI for many years, various software development tools have been introduced successively, gradually forming a “mix-and-match” application of outsourced software, software package customization, and self-developed software. situation.
At that time, in the era when fast fish eat slow fish, efficiency was the lifeline of an enterprise. “Building the Great Wall of China with European and American bricks” and developing the business as soon as possible was a priority. However, with the growth of business volume, newly established production lines, newly added business scenarios, continuously accumulated massive data, recruited R&D personnel, and large-scale cross-departmental collaboration scenarios continue to increase. The original “mix-and-match” software It is becoming more and more difficult to keep up with the pace of Huawei’s development.
Take demand management as an example.
In the early days, the coexistence of multiple tools led to the lack of a unified demand management tool within Huawei. Each product line could only “fight on its own” in R&D. It was easy to deal with the small internal needs of a single project. Once it encountered a large product-level , Solution-level requirements, it is inevitable that there will be problems such as distortion of demand transmission, chaotic demand management, inefficient collaboration, and uneven acceptance time.
At the same time, as the scope of cross-department and cross-business collaboration involved becomes wider and wider, demand management no longer stops at information transmission, but also needs to continuously pull together the process data of the entire project, so as to control the overall R&D risk. However, it is not easy to break through the base through various tools with different models and uneven interfaces. The secondary development work involved is very heavy, and the cost is also high.
In addition, the advent of the era of cloud computing has ushered in subversion of software innovation. Cloud computing not only enhances the underlying infrastructure of software development and improves computing power, but also changes the form of many software on the cloud. Transform software development from the previous single, low-efficiency model to today’s distributed, high-efficiency, and large-scale collaborative cloud development model. For China’s software industry, this is a rare opportunity to “overtake on a curve”.
In view of these existing business pain points and future business development considerations, since 2011, Huawei has started to replace software development tools with self-developed tools.
According to the product manager of HUAWEI CLOUD, there were two plans at that time: one was partial replacement, that is, only the desktop workflow of the purchased software was modified, and the underlying data flow was not changed; All replaced by Huawei self-developed. The two sets of solutions are used in different businesses according to the timing and actual needs of different business launch times.
Still take the requirement management tool as an example. In 2014, Huawei began to consider building a company-level demand system CloudALM.
Demand, as the first link in the R&D chain, is the “engine” of product development. A successful product often takes 40% of the time to manage requirements, and a failed product, off-target requirements management is often the main reason for its failure. An analyst report pointed out that in the research and development industry, the rate of project abortion caused by poor demand management is as high as 71%.
Numerous accident sites in reality have also witnessed that it is very challenging to accurately understand and realize the requirements, and there is often a phenomenon of “contradictory” between the final realization of the product and the real needs of customers.
Therefore, how to manage the demand well and develop a high-quality and efficient demand management tool has become a major “highlight” in Huawei’s software development tool self-development project.
According to Huawei Cloud product experts, one of the core advantages of CloudALM is a cloud-based system that replaces a bunch of complicated tools before. The unified base facilitates the aggregation and connection of R&D data and process data in different products and scenarios. , Get through, so as to be able to support large-scale cross-departmental collaboration of thousands of people or tens of thousands of people.
“On the surface, it is a demand system, but from the base of data integration, it is more a relationship platform.” The relationship platform is like the criss-crossing routes and compass in the sea, allowing massive process data and The quality risks hidden behind become clear at a glance, so that you will not lose your way and know how to start after the problem occurs.
At the same time, this set of unified tools also breaks through the previous limitations of segmented demand management, covering the entire life cycle, allowing the early warning and intervention methods to change from the previous “what goes wrong and where to fix” firefighting to the current ” Everything under control” full-process service.
There are many other improvements like this. Before 2019, Huawei had explored up and down on the road of self-research in software development, accumulated a series of mature experience, and made steady progress until the emergence of the 516 ban.
After the 516 incident, Huawei found that many non-self-developed tools had problems in obtaining them. In an emergency response, Huawei quickly adjusted the early plan 1, accelerated the pace of self-developed replacement, and also began to carry out efficiency reforms and brand upgrades for self-developed systems.
In terms of demand management, in the two years from 2019 to 2020, Huawei will continue to carry out demand management including terminals, chips, clouds, vehicles, and embedded devices on a newly upgraded HUAWEI CLOUD CodeArts Req platform.
Req is just a part of CodeArts, a software R&D tool chain on Huawei Cloud. The entire R&D production line of CodeArts involves requirements management, code hosting, code inspection, compilation and construction, deployment, testing, release, etc. Experience, process and method, and it is still iterating.
Since 2018, Huawei has launched software capability improvement reforms, including the optimization of the end-to-end requirements traceability of the Req link.
“In the era of hand-carrying in the past, the coordination of needs between different production lines and teams mainly relied on Excel and emails. When tracing the chain, it was necessary to manually review and sort out fragmented documents, which was time-consuming and laborious, and the efficiency was not high. But there are With the Req platform, that has all changed.”
Take the telecom operator project as an example.
Since the telecommunications industry is related to the national economy and the people’s livelihood, operators must conduct special audits on the product development process of these manufacturers before signing large-scale cooperation with Huawei and other service manufacturers every year. This requires manufacturers to provide traceable research and development materials. However, due to The huge amount of data involved and the many departments involved made the work considered arduous for a long time in the manual period before the launch of the Req automation system.
“If the product involves the collaboration of 5 teams, then each team usually needs 2 people, a total of 10 people to prepare materials; if the audit time is one or two weeks, then the preparation materials will take about one or two months .”
“With the Req platform, now there is almost no need to send special personnel to prepare materials. It only takes a few minutes to turn on the system and let customers directly view it.” The product manager told Leifeng.com that the self-innovation and superimposition efficiency of the base is constantly increasing. Optimization. At present, the Req platform supports real-time viewing of the entire process, and can achieve two-way, credible, and intelligent traceability.
Recently, Huawei has built the IPD demand management template into the Req system, providing three major templates for IPD system equipment, IPD independent software, and IPD self-operating software and cloud services. Decompose layer by layer to ensure the implementation of organizational strategies, and further enhance all aspects of traceability and customization capabilities.
In fact, after years of self-research and precipitation, CodeArts Req has now fully covered Huawei’s various business R&D, efficiently supporting the demand collaboration of Huawei’s 130,000 R&D personnel, with a monthly API call volume of more than 1.5 billion times, and a cumulative management of more than 50 million requirements. Continue to promote efficient collaboration and business development within Huawei.
From CloudALM to CodeArts Req, the evolution of requirements management tools is just a microcosm of Huawei’s continuous self-development and iteration in software development.
In the past ten years, Huawei has gone through the process of automation, cloudification, visualization, efficiency reform, and process optimization in self-developed software development tools. Among the branding tools, it provides Chinese enterprises with a new choice to meet their independent and controllable needs.
Hardened in actual combat, evolving together with the industry
The self-development, implementation, and growth of software tools have never been achieved overnight, but a process that needs to be continuously tempered in actual business. When talking about the feelings of participating in it, several Huawei experts expressed emotion, “It sounds like a cloud, but in fact it has been tempered. But it is also the accumulation of these difficulties that Huawei has developed in software tools. confidence.”
Among them, a case that impresses them is CodeArts Req’s internal car BU business application in Huawei.
A major feature of the car BU business in terms of demand management is that there are many convolution processes and collaboration modules, and the complexity is high.
“When Che BU was first established, there were many R&D personnel in this department, which was a typical cross-department and large-scale collaborative R&D model.”
According to reports, the demand model of traditional ICT services is a “tree-like” structure, which can be decomposed layer by layer, which is relatively orderly and simple. However, the demand model of vehicles is a crisscross “network” structure. There will be collaboration across networks, wireless, chips, and various terminal product lines. If there is a deviation in a certain link, it may lead to the death of the entire solution or product.
Not only that, but the car is also facing a series of external certifications. The entire demand management process needs to be audited by the outside. Especially the vehicle business, there are many objects that need to be connected. It is necessary to take the demand as the source and eliminate all aspects of design, simulation, testing, and manufacturing. To get through, the entire demand traceability process is very cumbersome during audits.
In view of the complexity of the car BU business, in order to better fit the research and development, the three-party team within Huawei was assembled for the project, including the Huawei Cloud PaaS platform tool development team, the car BU business team, and the equipment tool team. Focusing on tackling key problems, on the basis of the original tools, a series of enhancements have been completed in the IPD process, two-way traceability, countersigned baseline and other links of car companies.
“One of the core characteristics of demand management tools is that they can carry specific services and solve practical problems of enterprises. This needs to be polished through rich practical scenarios. Huawei’s rich internal business production line is a natural testing ground, allowing self-developed tools to It is a natural advantage to repeatedly refine in a large number of complex scenes.” The product manager added.
“It may be difficult for many companies to imagine how to do collaborative development with thousands or tens of thousands of people, but for Huawei, this kind of research and development is already commonplace.”
Car BU is just one of many application cases of CodeArts in Huawei. It is understood that at present, all production lines of Huawei Group have launched this set of self-developed tools. Not only that, as the polishing matures, the CodeArts series products are gradually empowering external industries such as logistics, automobiles, and oil and gas.
Take Debon Logistics as an example. As we all know, logistics is a heavy-duty industry that combines software and hardware and involves multiple links such as transportation, storage, loading, unloading, distribution, and information processing. refinement” feature.
During the cooperation with Huawei, Debon put forward very detailed management requirements for the entire line, such as refining the management dimension to each link and each person’s authority. At the same time, due to the complex logistics coordination process, many projects need to be grouped together Into a project set, manage it in the form of project set… “At that time, more than ten engineers were stationed in the Shanghai Debon site, and it took about half a year to help the customer realize the online demand management process. , Dataization, an important step in the integration of digital and intelligence.” Relevant experts said.
In such external landing cases, the needs of customers from all walks of life are constantly urging Huawei CodeArts Req to grow more new capabilities to carry diversified business scenarios. “It’s a two-way evolution.”
In many communication occasions, many companies closely related to Huawei have asked similar questions: “Why are many demand management tools on the market still satisfying some small scenarios, but when it comes to large-scale collaboration Can’t do what we want? Huawei’s R&D scale is bigger, how did Huawei manage it, can we learn and use it?”
Similar inquiries let Huawei see the needs of the external market. As a result, Huawei opened up its self-developed and self-used tools, together with a series of professional consulting services, to other external companies in the form of cloud services. This is also the background of the launch of Huawei Cloud CodeArts series products.
It is reported that in addition to the already open requirements management tool Req, Huawei will gradually open up products and capabilities in other links around the CodeArts tool chain. In the first half of next year, Huawei will release a hybrid cloud-based version to support private deployment of enterprises. In the second half of the year, more R&D tools with built-in IPD demand management capabilities and industry demand models will be launched successively.
write at the end
Recalling the early autumn of September 2020, when Ren Zhengfei visited Peking University, Tsinghua University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and other schools, he gave a speech entitled “Pierce the sky upwards and root down to the roots”.
In terms of rooting down, he said that China’s economic aggregate is so large, and such a big tree cannot do without strong roots. If it does not take root, the tree will be unstable. What if a typhoon blows? The short, flat and fast economic development model in which we just turn on the tap is unsustainable.
Under this concept, in recent years, the depth and breadth of Huawei’s de-Americanization of software development tools have continued to expand.
From hardware (X86->ARM), to operating system (Linux/Windows->Euler), to database (Oracle->GaussDB), middleware, and application software, facing the replacement of hundreds of components and tens of millions Huawei has steadily and firmly promoted the full-stack self-research and replacement internally.
Now the launch of the CodeArts series of products has also allowed Huawei to fire the first shot of overflowing capabilities, so that the road traveled, the scenery seen, and the experience learned in more than 30 years of research and development are no longer just the assets of a company, but Being able to share and serve other companies has become a beneficial practice that supports China’s software base and digital transformation. Leifeng.com Leifeng.com
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