The cooperation between Weidian and Sosou is a natural one.

Very smooth.

When Wang Xiaochuan came back from Pengcheng, he came to the headquarters to meet with Boss Zhou. Not because of this trivial matter, he asked: "I heard about Ziweixing Engineering Institute. Did one of our distributed projects get off to a good start?"

Zhou Buqi said amusedly: "Why do you care about this? Yes, distributed page loading has little to do with your department."

"This is epoch-making."

"oh?"

"The concept of distribution has been around for a long time, but most of the time it is theoretical and difficult to demonstrate at the application level. Well, I am talking about China. The Academy of Engineering has made a good start in this field."

Zhou Buqi glanced at him and said, "Xiaozhou, if you have anything to say, just tell me."

Wang Xiaochuan scratched his head and then sighed, "In the past few months, Weidian's share has been between 33% and 35%. I am very ashamed. The share of Weidian browser is so high, but the share of search cannot increase.

, I have a responsibility.”

Zhou Buqi smiled and said: "The opponent is Baidu, how can it be that easy? Didn't the advertising density increase last month? I saw the financial report and the revenue exceeded 60 million."

"If compared with Baidu, with such a share, the monthly revenue would be at least 100 million."

"Well, take your time and accumulate first."

"I think Weidian's past technical direction was wrong and too ambitious. Xu Ming is leading the team to do personalized search. This is of course a good direction, but it is too far away and should not be a short-term goal. Search results

The personalized push of ads is much more complicated than the personalized push of advertisements, and the technical difficulty is too great.”

"What's the meaning?"

Wang Xiaochuan said: "Xu Ming is in the right direction, providing different search results according to different users. Low-end users try to provide simple content for easy understanding, thereby improving the search experience. High-end users push more complex content

, it can give them a sense of satisfaction in using it. This idea is great. But from a technical point of view, it is difficult to achieve in the short term. It cannot be achieved by simply changing the personalized advertising recommendation algorithm.

This requires more in-depth artificial intelligence research and deep learning of computers."

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows, "Artificial intelligence?"

Wang Xiaochuan said seriously: "We are not talking about establishing the Ziweixing Research Institute. Artificial intelligence will be a very important research field. I think Xu Ming's project team can be transferred to the research institute."

Zhou Buqi understood what he meant instantly.

Business management is very complicated!

Because Ziweixing has completed its A-round financing, there is no need to keep internal accounts, and various departments do not need to allocate expenditures to the search business. This has led to a problem - the loss of the search business.

In the past few months, in order to seize the market, Weidian has kept its advertising density very low. Since June, the advertising density has returned to normal and official operations have begun.

Weidian’s revenue is also very good, exceeding 60 million yuan.

But even so, we still can’t make ends meet!

Lost 14 million last month!

This is Ziweixing’s only loss-making business group.

The reason for this is that the search business group involves complex technologies and has a total of six R&D project teams, which costs a lot of money.

To solve this problem, of course, we need to clear out the Xu Ming team that is irrelevant in a short period of time.

Without this project, if Weidian works harder and increases its revenue, maybe by September, it will be able to truly generate profits.

Zhou Buqi didn't care about this.

Search is an asset-heavy and technology-heavy Internet industry, and the investment is very large. Because it involves too much data, it requires large-scale server clusters and continuously improved technology research and development.

Therefore, there is no rush to make profits.

However, Zhou Buqi can also understand the other party.

All businesses in the company are making money, and only the search business is losing money. Someone will definitely make irresponsible remarks. Even if Wang Xiaochuan can withstand the pressure, his team may not be able to withstand such accusations, which will affect the company.

morale.

Just like Wang Jian in his previous life working for Alibaba Cloud, he could withstand the pressure, but the technical elites he had worked so hard to find could not withstand the pressure and left one after another.

This is a management problem of Boss Ma. He did not handle internal conflicts in a timely manner. Maybe he is full of doubts about Alibaba Cloud deep down in his heart.

To do high-end technology research and development, you need to be relaxed, quiet and calm. You need to provide the best and most elegant working environment, the most beautiful and mellow food and coffee, so that engineers are most likely to be inspired and come up with several good ideas.

ideas to overcome technical difficulties.

The so-called office area is like an entertainment area, which refers to this kind of team.

And the various motivational methods of shouting slogans, pumping blood, and turning pressure into motivation are fine for other businesses, but they are definitely not suitable for high-end technology research and development.

Zhou Buqi has been a leader for so many years and has gained experience. As a leader, you should focus on people, not things; you should focus on results, not processes.

As a boss, Zhou Buqi has a very gentle style and is willing to understand the difficulties of his subordinates. He nodded and said: "Yes, I agree. Lao Xu said that he would try to recruit Shen Xiangyang this month. If not this month, he will not do it next month."

It will definitely work. Just hold on for a while, and we will make arrangements when Dean Shen recruits you."

Wang Xiaochuan was very happy, "One more thing, we want to rent a data center."

"ah?"

"The amount of data is getting bigger and bigger. It's too expensive to just keep purchasing servers by ourselves. Last month, I ordered 500 servers and spent another 40 million."

A data center is a server cluster composed of tens of thousands of servers. There are more and more Chinese web pages, and the amount of information is getting larger and larger. The hundreds or thousands of server clusters built by ourselves are not enough.

Zhou Buqi frowned slightly, "If we want to do cloud computing, the first step is to build a cloud computing data center. By then, all Ziweixing's businesses will be connected to the cloud computing data center."

Wang Xiaochuan said: "Yes, I know. So in the short term we will just rent. If there was no cloud computing plan, I would have suggested that we build our own data center."

"Is it safe to rent it?"

Although Zhou Buqi is a technical layman, he usually comes into contact with technical masters like Xu Liangjie, Wang Xiaochuan, Cheng Binghao, and Guo Pengfei. He learns quickly and knows many technical concepts, so he is not a complete novice.

Is it reliable to store data in someone else’s data center?

Wang Xiaochuan said: "It's CNNIC's data center, a national institution, so it's not a big problem. Baidu also rented one and stored the data here."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "That's it..."

Wang Xiaochuan said: "There are more and more data on the friend network and school network, and it is definitely not feasible to store them all locally. I think this plan should be implemented as soon as possible. Renting 8,000 servers in the data center will be enough to cover all Ziweixing's businesses.

Used.”

Zhou Buqi twitched his lips, "Since you have this idea, why did you still spend so much money purchasing servers last month?"

Wang Xiaochuan explained: "After all, it is a rented data center from someone else's house. It is best for the core data to be stored on our own server, which is controllable. After this round of purchases, we will go to the data center to rent a piece of land. In the next one or two years,

The infrastructure is basically enough.”

Zhou Buqi smiled and said, "You are so optimistic!"

"Is this okay? I haven't told Xu Liangjie."

"Then you mention it to the technical committee. I am a layman and I respect everyone's opinions. In principle, I think this idea is feasible. When our cloud computing data center is built in 2009, we can then transplant the data.

.”

"Well, the last thing is what I said at the beginning, distribution."

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows slightly, "What happened to Distribution?"

Wang Xiaochuan said: "There are many distributed theories, but they have always been developed but not developed. There are no domestic applications. There are also very few relevant talents. They are basically brought out by Microsoft Research and Google Research..."

"Pick the key points!"

"I know a person who has specialized in distributed systems for many years and is considered the top person in the country in this field."

"oh?"

"He is Zhou Feng, my college classmate, and we used to work as a chinaren together."

"oh……"

Zhou Buqi remained calm and said that he had never heard of this person.

However, there is one thing he knows.

In the 1996 Tsinghua University computer class, a large number of top computer geniuses emerged, and they were quite famous in the industry. Among that group of people, Wang Xiaochuan was not even the top one.

Wang Xiaochuan said: "When I was in college, I often didn't go to class and didn't participate in school activities very much. Zhou Feng was different. He was a standard good student and a top student. His academic performance was always very good. He was also the chairman of Tsinghua Science and Technology Association.

He led the people to build Tsinghua’s campus network, as well as Sakai BBS. After getting admitted to graduate school, his master’s degree was focused on distributed computer systems.”

"Oh?" Zhou Buqi's eyes lit up, "When was that?"

Wang Xiaochuan said: "2000."

Zhou Buqi exclaimed, "What a talent!"

I have paid attention to this field so early and started research. This is a very sharp vision. Unfortunately, I may not be able to learn anything in China.

Wang Xiaochuan continued: "Even in Tsinghua, this field... I finished my master's degree in less than two years, and then went to the University of Berkeley in the United States to study for a Ph.D. with Professor Eric Brewer, specializing in distributed systems and operations.

System. Oh, Professor Brewer is an academician of the American Academy of Engineering and the world's most powerful scientist in the field of distributed distribution. The cap theorem is called Brewer's theorem."

Zhou Buqi has a big head.

Fortunately, I finally understood. This Zhou Feng is a top talent! Especially in the distributed field, he studied under world-class scientists and has profound attainments in this field.
To be continued...