Reporter / Yan Hui
On December 16, 2001, the Symphony Concert held by Beijing Century Theater was to start, and the general manager Shen Huizhong is also like this symphony concert, and the words are proud: "since 1997 In August, the first office was established in Beijing to today, BEA has been more than 4 years in China. In these four years, BEA brings the middleware technology, products and application experience to China, and promotes it, teaching it. It has given more than 200 partners in China, and the most advanced middleware technology is used to more than 500 domestic large enterprises, more than 1,000 core business applications. In the past four years, we have in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu The branches have been opened, and the number of employees has developed from 3 to 180, and the turnover has been over 50 times. "
When it comes to BEA, you may only know that it is a middleware company, but the BEA has to rise, many people may not know. Here, you can make you simply understand this process: in the three founders of the BEA, Sushi and Zhuang Sihao look for a huge market, work together by venting and venture capital providers. A paper plan is integrated to $ 50 million in risk investment, then acquires all elements associated with middleware with a very fast speed: technology, products, technicians, producers and distributors, thereby developing, producing and selling all aspects. A more mature global network is quickly established and successful. (Item from Zheng Yaxin "dead")
Today, this success is also transplanted to China, especially in Novell, and many US software companies do not enter China's contrast, which is more dazzling. Shen Huizhong, as a leader of BEA China, understanding him, and learned the mystery of BEA success in China.
BEA's China Tour
The development of BEA in China is the road to the development of Shen Huizhong in BEA. Shen Huizhong is born in Wuhan, 16-year-old to Hong Kong settlement, after graduating from the Hong Kong Chinese University Information Engineering, in addition to Hong Kong Automatic System Co., Ltd., raised to sales managers in the shortest time. But in his depths, I have been hope that there is a greater development space in the mainland market. Opportunity, January 1996, BEA established agencies in Hong Kong. After the Northern Asia Pacific Director He Dadang hired his secretary, the second employee was Shen Huizhong. When you talk to the BEA, Shen Huizhong thinks that it is a coincidence, it is also the right choice.
Shen Huizhong is responsible for starting business operations in Hong Kong. After setting up an office, we will start the business of Hong Kong telecommunications and freight terminals. At that time, the BEA did not have any branches in mainland China. After a short period of time, the Hong Kong office received some inquiry and business needs information from the continent that turned from the United States. So Shen Huizhong took a circle in the mainland in March 1997, and inspected the domestic market. The first stop is Zhuhai's ICBC Development Center, and then goes to Beijing and HP and other BEA global partners to exchange. .
This exam allowed the Shen Hui Center surprised. "I felt that the informationization project in China's investment in mainland China is too big. Hong Kong's many companies doing things compared to the mainland, like children and adults. At that time, when I was talking to the person in charge of the financial industry, I found any province's business, and the size and investment of an industry was extremely rare in Hong Kong. "
Newly opened Diaoyutai Hotel can often see the figure of Shen Huizhong. He and two colleagues have begun to write a survey report and plan to open up the mainland market. There is only one small table in the room. As long as one is used, others can only work in bed. "Just like this, after three weeks, the plan finally completed it in bed."
There are two main points to convey in the plan, first to enter the mainland market immediately, and we must develop a medium and long-term plan to open up this market. Shen Huizhong believes that from the long line, China's mainland market will exceed the market share of most Asia Pacific in the next five or six years and become the second largest market for Japan. At that time, Zhuang Sihao, one of the three founders of BEA (current BEA CEO) was a Chinese, ancestral, and Shen Huizhong, a deep feelings of China, plus BEA's attention to the global market, and quickly approved This is not a very specific idea and recognizes the two suggestions mentioned in the Recommendation, authorizing Shen Huizhong to be responsible for the mainland market.
In 1997, middleware was less known. "The middle piece name is BEA brought in, when we carefully consider what kind of Chinese is better, because there is no such concept, there is no noun. So just start selling this thing, give the customer for a long time The other party doesn't know what to do. "But Shen Huizhong exchanged according to his experience and other teams, and thought that China's market was very open. Compared to Japan and South Korea, China's acceptance of new companies and new technologies is also the best, which provides a good objective condition for foreign companies.
"In the past 4 years, we have been cultivating this market, let users understand what is something in the middle, this thing is used. This requires a strategy. I think put a new concept, new technology to a new In the market, the most important thing is to first let your partners and customers experience the true value of this technology, not just the nouns written in the book. Therefore, the strategy is not publicized by the media, and mainly Partnership training. "
Before the middleware appears, many large customer processing systems are running on a large UNIX host and cannot run on an open system. But the front-end need to handle the amount of users too large, the technology is too complicated, and the large machine is very expensive. Middleware can solve these problems and help users create more value. "What we do is to help users solve these previously impossible tasks (Mission Impossible)."
BEA's first customer in China is China Post's green card engineering. The green card project is a postal financial system implemented in 1993, which is designed to make the postal savings business through computer networking system, improve the efficiency of postal savings business, and further achieve high Quality service system. At that time, it was proposed to ensure the flexibility and openness of the system, and the application software and hardware platform should be independent, and one application software can run on a variety of hardware platforms. Under the premise of considering the system design principle, the three-layer client / server structure is the first choice for the postal savings application system; for the three-layer structure of the middleware infrastructure, through the in-depth understanding and test comparison of multiple products, final BEA Tuxedo became the first choice.
But the road to BEA entered China CCB was relatively long. "From 1997 I wrote the first bidding for China, until the first two months we have signed the contract with the CCB headquarters, and the application of securities and large customers in the province will apply on the BEA platform. Development, all for four years. If there is no long-term plan and the attitude responsible for users is unimaginable. In these four years, in fact, the construction of the provinces and cities is already using our products, we pass our products. They provide services and technical support, which has been proved from all aspects, and ultimately makes the other party to recognize this value. "
As the saying goes, "It's good, it's hard". Many companies have no problems due to business relationships, short-term gains, but long-term cooperation, if there is no strength, very fast, mutual period is mutual . This is especially true in software products. So after the BEA and China CCB have signed the contract, Shen Huizhong is very excited, but exciting is not only a major customer, but after the long-term process, the customer's final recognition of the BEA product and service value. "When a customer looks at you, and eventually gives you a bigger affirmation, there will be special feelings." Under Shen Huizhong's leadership, BEA has achieved remarkable results in the Chinese market, participating in domestic The construction of many important information projects, including the coverage of national postal integrated network projects, China Customs, National Foreign Exchange Authority, China Civil Aviation and other large projects. The company's sales performance has grown by 200% in the past two years, and gradually becoming one of the fastest growing business units in BEA.
Successful elements
The company should grow step by step, and the new company has to enter the new market, and it will definitely encounter various challenges. Shen Huizhong also escaped these in the process of leading the BEA into China. "At the beginning, the competitors ridiculed that we won't earn money within five years."
However, Shen Huizhong has a bamboo because he persuaded the headquarters to do China as a strategic market. There is a long-term plan, not eager to seek, and it is not required to get a high return in a short period of time. "A successful software company in foreign countries must have a long-term look. I feel that China's mainland market is slow, and the market is usually smaller than imagined. So it is certain from long-term planning, Just wanted to fish from China. "And he believes that there is obligation to communicate locally and the company's headquarters. Can have a good way to make them understand the local situation and give considerable execution rights.
Shen Huizhong also believes that a global software company wants to succeed in China, and you must go a lot of investment in the early stage. Because on the one hand, there is only a lot of investment to develop the entire market quickly. "The Chinese market is so big. If a person speaks alone, the effect is very poor. Therefore, many people need to help you promote. And these need a lot of investment." In addition, in China, both partners or customers are very Paying attention to local support capabilities, paying attention to local investment, many customers are to see the company's own credit, not a simple business purchase relationship, they want to be a partner that can trust each other while buying products and technologies, this There is also a lot of investment. In order to indicate support for partners, BEA will invest 10 million yuan per year and establish an Application Solution Support Center nationwide.
The third point is to find a leader who understands Chinese culture, and can hire a group of employees who have a good relationship with Chinese customers, and not high cost use foreign people to do the Chinese market. Senior management of most multinational companies is in the United States, they often use problems in the development of global strategies, organizational structures, sales models, and sales focus. But in China, the market and customer maturity and the habit of doing business and the United States are quite different. If the company's headquarters can't understand the differences in geographical and cultural, it will definitely encounter a lot of difficulties in the operation of globalization. For example, the sales of BEA in the United States have always used direct sales, but China is all made through partners. When the BEA held a partner conference, he came to 170 partners, more than 200 people. Shen Huizhong believes "If you have to move in China in China, I believe that BEA must have no current success. Many famous companies have been developing in China, including this reason."
Therefore, Shen Huizhong believes that foreign software can not succeed in China. The company has developed more fast, how much development space is there, this is determined before the opening, is only the process of implementation, the specific development speed is going to rely on the executor Quality.
In the development process, of course, we must pay attention to the company's culture. "The culture of the Globalization company should be unstringent restrictions. If a multinational company can only be implemented in a certain region, it is certainly unable to successfully operate globalization, so the culture of BEA is a culture of globalization. "Now Shen Huizhong is full of confidence." The idea sharing how to transform the success of multinational companies to another country or region, must be worth exploring. China is a market that is love and hate for foreign companies. Potential user groups and needs are coveted by every multinational company, while China's software piracy has made many foreign companies. Adobe Chinese company Piezuin has an extremely extreme idea, think that large multinational software should not invest in software industries in China, so they have only three employees in China, mainly to hit the lawsuit. There is also a famous software company Macromedia that has not entered China. BEA is relatively fortunate, Shen Huizhong said that "piracy did not have a big impact on the process of BEA in China. Because we are all users of the company, from my experience, China's large enterprises Still very conscious, no one has pirated. "And China's current software genuine environment is constantly improved, even if there is a pirate, Shen Huizhong has not been plagued, he thinks it is to consider from a benign, these are potential User, so the first thing to do in BEA China has just established, the first thing to do in 2002 is a software and training for the national universal value of RMB 1 billion in 2002, thus driving software application platform technology in China. Education and popularization work. At present, the BEA has signed a cooperative intentbook with 6 universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua. The core of the BEA is actually middleware technology, but in the face of a fundamentally immature market, in addition to cultivating the market, BEA will pack their core middleware technology to faculty solution, such as Application Server. Server), portal and integrated solutions provide corresponding value reflection in accordance with user needs. Take a look at the name of the BEA, they turn "E" to a significant red, used to show their attention to e-business. Solutions that pack their core technology into user taste should be that many of our software companies need to learn.
Successful performance of BEA
l BEA is a software company that achieves annual income of $ 1 billion in history.
l High-speed growth for 22 consecutive quarters
l Bea WebLogic E-commerce platform The core of the E-commerce platform has the reputation of the "First Java Application Server" in the industry (according to GIGA, IDC and Gartner evaluation)
l 1,900 partners in the world, and 100 new partners
l "Business Week" Select BEA to create the biggest benefit of investors - 884% (June 2000)
l 1 of the world's top 10 most valuable software companies
l BEA is more than 10,000 customers worldwide, including:
"Fortune" 500 strong Chinese telecommunications company
Computer / office equipment manufacturer of "Fortune" 500
"Wealth" 500 strong financial, securities and investment wealth management companies
"Fortune" 500-strong pharmaceutical company
"Fortune" 500 strong health care company
Most of the "wealth" 500 air and freight companies
Most commercial banks in "Wealth" 500, including the largest nine banks in the United States
"Wealth" 100 strong, "Wealth" E-50 and Business 2.0 100 strong companies
