01 | context: why is Zhongtai so popular?

2019 Year to date , if IT What can be called hot spots , Then the middle stage will certainly occupy a place , It's like that any enterprise or news related to Zhongtai will attract much attention , If something doesn't touch the concept of the middle office , It seems to be behind the times .

For a while, Zhongtai became one of the focuses of attention .

But what exactly is midfield ？ The answer remains elusive 、 Vague , Even many people are still thinking about whether this concept has the meaning of its existence , Is it another hyped concept , It's just a flash in the pan .

I've sorted out ,2019 Year to date , Half a year , Not really , Just my personal collection of articles related to Zhongtai 300 piece . lately , For this course , I went back to all the content , It is found that in each article, each author has his own perspective and views on Zhongtai , Up to now, the industry is still unable to completely unify , There are different opinions , But the good news is that there are more and more consensus in many aspects , The concept of "Zhongtai" is also slowly fading away from its mystery , Come to you and me .

And that's why I'm interested in doing this course , In recent years, I have been working full-time in the related work of the middle office , Fortunately, as an architect and product manager, I personally participated in the mid platform construction projects of many large-scale group enterprises . So I hope I can take this opportunity , Summarize what you have seen and learned , Try to restore a panoramic view of the middle stage for you , Help you understand the nature of this concept and trend .

I have always followed a point of view , Want to figure out a concept or a technology , We must first go back to history , Back when it was born , Stroll through its development process , To explore the background and reasons for it .

As the saying goes, we should know what it is and why it is .

Today's content is the beginning of the main chapter of this course , I want to take you back to 10 Years ago , Back to the beginning of the birth of Zhongtai , With the pace of time, we go through the birth and development of Zhongtai again , Let's see where Zhongtai comes from , Where will it go ？

2008~2015 key word ： Nurture

The rise of Zhongtai , It's the trend . But the concept of the middle platform , First noticed by everyone , It must be regarded as the China Taiwan strategy proposed by Alibaba . I wonder if you have found , There is an interesting point , That's why I said that Zhongtai was first noticed by everyone because of Alibaba , Instead of directly saying that the concept of Zhongtai was created in Alibaba ？

Since our column is called “ Let's get to the middle of the story ”, Here we can say a little more , For the word Zhongtai , Many people think it was created by Alibaba . But so far , The industry still has some different views and opinions on this issue , Because there was a front desk in the bank very early 、 Zhongtai 、 Backstage , And what's interesting is , Alibaba is in 2019 When the Alibaba cloud summit was held in Shanghai , When introducing Alibaba's double platform , English translation also uses the translation of middle office in the bank , That is to say Middle Office, But is this concept related to the concept of middle office in the banking field , At present, there is no official information from Alibaba to prove it .

But for you and me , The word "Zhongtai" was coined by Alibaba , Or does it really refer to the concept that banks already have , In my submission , It's not that important , We can focus more on IT In the context of , What exactly is this concept , What on earth can help us .

As for Alibaba's China Taiwan strategy , Now the industry generally believes that it is from 2015 Ma Yun visited Supercell At the beginning . But I pay attention to the information shared by Alibaba , As well as the actual understanding with a number of Alibaba students , I learned that the event of this visit can only be regarded as an introduction , Alibaba's process of becoming a Chinese platform , It started before that . therefore , In order to truly understand the background and causes of Alibaba Zhongtai , Need to go back to an earlier time , At least go back to 2008 year .

Because in 2008 year , With the adjustment of Alibaba's strategy , Tmall was born by following the trend . But compared with Taobao , It has its own characteristics , So at that time, tmall and Taobao had the problem of repeated construction , That is, the chimney system architecture that is often mentioned now .

Chimney system architecture , It has caused a lot of repeated construction and waste of resources , What shall I do? ？ The most natural idea is to integrate repetitive organizations and systems . Because of this , Alibaba shared business division was officially born , Be responsible for the platform transformation of the public parts of each front desk system , After a painful groping , Take advantage of the opportunity of the explosion of cost-effectiveness , To truly establish the important position of Alibaba's shared business division , It has planted the seeds of Ali's big, middle and Taiwan strategy .

2015 key word ： Alibaba's China Taiwan strategy was born

History is like a train running between ridges , Everything is moving forward in accordance with the established direction .

Zhongtai, a new species, is also growing with the advance of time , Just waiting for an opportunity .

2015 year , Finally, I waited for this opportunity .

Then there is the story that everyone likes to talk about ： stay 2015 year , Jack Ma led Ali executives to visit Finland 、 It claims to be the most successful mobile game company in the world Supercell. Speaking of the company , You may feel strange , But when it comes to games developed by the company , I'm sure you've heard of it ,《 Tribal wars 》《 Island soldiers 》《 Hay Day 》 And other well-known games are all in the hands of this game company .

But what touched Ma Yun and Alibaba's senior management team at that time was , It has spawned so many enterprises that are popular in global games , But less than 200 Employees . The average team responsible for a game is only 5 To 7 Team members . The team has full freedom , They can decide what kind of products to develop , After that, the public beta version will be launched at the fastest speed , Let the market judge , To verify the quality of the product . Once the product fails , Give up quickly , Not only will there be no punishment , Instead, the team will raise a glass to celebrate , Then immediately make adjustments and continue to quickly look for new directions .

Um. , Yes , This is a typical lean entrepreneurship routine .

But to make this mechanism work properly , There must be a premise , That is, the construction time of the product should be short enough , The cost of trial and error should be low enough , In this way, the team will be able to make a lot of trial and error , By constantly learning from failure , Continuous iterative adjustment , Find the right direction as soon as possible , Let the progress bar of successful innovation move forward quickly .

And behind this mechanism to achieve , Namely Supercell after 6 In the process of game development, the public 、 General game materials and algorithms . Based on these basic materials and algorithms like Lego building blocks , To support several small teams to develop a new game as quickly as building blocks in a few weeks .

This approach touched the visiting Alibaba senior management team , This concept is different from what Alibaba and the industry have been trying to conceive for so many years “ Thick platform , Thin application ” The architecture direction coincides . This is the visit , It has strengthened Alibaba's management's determination to adjust the organizational structure , It also accelerated and catalysed the official birth of Alibaba's China Taiwan strategy .

Soon after , stay 2015 year 12 month 7 Japan , Alibaba group at that time CEO Zhang Yong said through an internal letter ：“ From today , We launched Alibaba Group in an all-round way 2018 China Taiwan strategy in , Build in line with DT The times are more innovative and flexible ‘ Tai Chung Tai 、 Small front desk ’ Organizational and operational mechanisms .”

thus , Alibaba's China Taiwan strategy was officially born , And before “ Thick platform , Thin application ” It also turned into “ Tai Chung Tai , Small front desk ”.

But what's interesting is , stay 2015 When Alibaba's China Taiwan strategy was just put forward in , The impression didn't make much waves . At that time, we were talking about huaqiangu and 《 My skateboarding shoes 》, The Internet is also the Internet + and O2O. I don't know , A new battlefield has begun to breed , The seeds have been planted .

2017 key word ： Born in the sky

With 2015 The birth of the Zhongtai concept in , After a silent but surging undercurrent 2016 year , stay 2017 In, we gradually began to hear more and more voices about Zhongtai in the community , Alibaba and didi travel together began to share their own experience in the construction of the middle platform , And books related to Zhongtai have also appeared on the market .

The collective voice of the Internet manufacturers , After two years, the concept of "Zhongtai" has returned to everyone's view .

As far as I know , Many enterprises, whether they are big Internet companies , Or some enterprises with strategic vision , It is also at this time point that we begin to re-examine and pay attention to this new concept that has shown signs .

Most of the first batch of enterprises that started to work also started their own overall planning and construction of the middle platform at this time , At that time, I also began to associate with Zhongtai , Pay attention to and study the middle stage , Actually participate in the actual midrange projects of customers .

But at that time, we faced many problems and difficulties , Enterprises like Alibaba or didi travel , When sharing the middle stage , It is more from the perspective of their own development process and their own problems . There is no doubt that , But when we look back at our own enterprise's middle office construction , The situation is different in every family , Each family has different problems , What should my middle stage look like ？ How to build ？ Many of these questions are in books 、 There is no direct answer in sharing , I can only rely on myself to grope bit by bit .

thus , Some brave pioneers began their own exploration journey in the middle of Taiwan , Although this is destined to be a road full of thorns .

Now look back , Some of the explorations at that time eventually failed , Some explorations continue . But anyway , The explorations and experiences of these pioneers , It has cleared away many obstacles for us to understand and build the middle platform now , Without these explorations and reflections , There will be no such experience and consensus .

2018 key word ： Full blown

2018 In the middle of , Zhongtai has been gaining momentum for a long time , Finally, it has ushered in a full-scale outbreak .

I have experienced this personally . I remember it very clearly , That should be 2018 year 9 month 9 Noon on Sunday , When colleagues are all lying on the table to take a nap , I finally took my lunch break , Hold it back 3 An article that took more than months to write was sent to the official account as usual . This article is about my thoughts on Zhongtai in the past year , In my opinion, it is an ordinary article .

What happened after that was far beyond my imagination , My article was forwarded by various communities in the afternoon , The reading volume quickly exceeded 10000 、 Twenty thousand 、 thirty thousand 、 forty thousand …… This is for me, who usually only reads hundreds of articles at most , A little at a loss . At that time, I felt like all my friends 、 Friends of friends 、 Friend's friend's friend , Are forwarding this Zhongtai article .

It was also the first time that I felt the heat of Zhongtai , It has been ready for a long time , Finally ushered in their own outbreak .

But this is the only big discussion , Not enough . What happened next , You may also remember . Come on , Let me give you a quick review ：

• 2018 year 9 month 30 Japan , Tencent announced 7 The largest organizational change in the past years , The cloud and smart industry business group has been established （CSIG）. meanwhile , Tencent has set up a new technical committee , Announced that in the future, it will build a technology center .

• 2018 year 11 month 26 Japan , Ali announced an organizational upgrade , Alibaba cloud business group is upgraded to Alibaba cloud intelligent business group , Fully integrate mid platform intelligence with Alibaba cloud .

• 2018 year 12 month 21 Japan , The HR Department of JD group issued an announcement on the organizational structure adjustment of JD mall , The announcement says ：“ Under the new organizational structure , Jingdong Mall will focus on customers , Divided into front, middle and back . The middle office is a shared platform that provides professional capabilities for front office business operation and innovation .”

• ……

It is precisely this wave of dazzling collective operations of Internet giants , One after another, they gave voice to the relay platform , Just officially put the middle stage on the stage , Ushered in a full-scale outbreak .

2019 The fog still exists

The heat of the middle stage goes through 2018 The outbreak at the end of the year , Continue to 2019 year , There is no sign of the abatement , On the contrary, it is getting higher and higher .

But the outbreak is the outbreak , It does not mean that the previous problems have been solved , Problems and confusion remain , It has not become clear because of the popularity of the concept , On the contrary, more and more enterprises follow up , Problems increase instead of decrease , More and more ：

• What is the difference between the middle stage and the platform ？
• How many kinds of Zhongtai are there ？ What is and what is not ？ Is there a construction sequence ？
• How to build the Zhongtai ？ Where to start ？ How to end ？
• Does the middle office need organizational adjustment ？ How to adjust ？
• How does Zhongtai verify the construction effect ？
• ……

These problems have been bothering me in recent years . Now , After so long exploration 、 Study and learn from the past generation , I also have some thoughts and conclusions . Now? , I share these with you , Discuss the answers to these questions with you , Help you clear some obstacles in your own middle platform construction .

To sum up

Last , Let's see if we can answer the opening question ： Why on earth is Zhongtai so popular ？

Like many trends are not formed by one force , I think the popularity of Zhongtai is at least due to the following four opportunities .

1. The model effect of Internet enterprises . There is no doubt about it , In the present , Internet company , In particular, the model and benchmarking effect of each large factory is still very strong . What's more, in the case of Zhongtai , The attitude of Internet enterprises is highly consistent , It was rare in the past , And the construction effect is really seen by everyone , It's enviable .

2. Then why do Internet companies promote Zhongtai so consistently ？ There is also a deeper reason behind this is the hot industrial Internet this year , In the middle and late stages of the consumption of the Internet , The battlefield on the consumer side is becoming increasingly white hot . In order to pursue sustainable growth , They have turned their attention to the supply side , This is this year ToB It is also very popular . The cloud and middle platform strategy is a very good entry point for Internet enterprises to enter traditional industries , So we see that more and more Internet enterprises are participating in the process of traditional enterprise cloud and enterprise digital transformation , Bring your own technology and practice to traditional industries , In the whole process , The middle stage is really a good grip and sharp weapon .

3. It's just that a slap doesn't ring , This time point really matches the nodes of some industries' transformation from systematization to platform . Through these years of information construction and accumulation , The information system in the enterprise has also been built , what ERP、CRM etc. , We have all the things we should have . Enterprises that started informatization construction earlier , The internal systems also began to have the chimneys mentioned above 、 Data island and other pain points . And enterprises that are relatively late in information construction , I really want to overtake at the corner through this wave of Zhongtai tide , One step in place . At this time, a whirlwind from the middle platform struck , Every enterprise feels that it has the needs and pain points to be a middle platform , Started its own middle office planning and construction .

4. Last , I think there is another very important point , It is also the underlying reason , The overall economic trend in the past two years is not very good , Uncertainty and unpredictability are constantly impacting various enterprises and even industries , The fear and anxiety of enterprise managers for the future development of the enterprise have doubled . Now , Internet enterprises have adopted the mid Taiwan strategy , Precipitate and reuse the capability , Dealing with uncertainty with certainty , Have fast trial and error 、 Ability and ideas for rapid innovation , This allows traditional enterprises to see a breakthrough direction . When the economy is good , Everyone is either busy expanding their business , speed is the soldier 's asset , How fast, how to come ; Or just stick to your mature business , Harvest on time , There is no strong motivation to change . But the economic situation is grim , Stress and fear are getting worse , In order to maintain the future survival and sustainable development of the enterprise , Or get ready for the next time the situation gets better and continue to sprint . therefore , Follow the example of the Internet industry , China Taiwan strategy has also become the choice of more and more traditional enterprises and industries .

In short, the so-called favorable weather, favorable location and harmonious people , Many factors gathered together to give birth to this wave of Zhongtai hot spots . However, the popularity of Zhongtai is just a flash in the pan ？ Or will it be like cloud computing and micro services IT Another important milestone in development ？ At present, it has not been decided , But I personally believe that the latter will have a very large possibility .