Exclusive interview with Ronglian Cloud Communications CTO Xu Zhiqiang: APP quickly realizes technical communication capabilities

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In the past 2014, 4G and mobile APPs have become hot topics that cannot be ignored. With the popularization of 4G and the improvement of network quality, video services have also become an important part of 2015. Similarly, WeChat has firmly occupied the domestic market with its unique advantages in social APPs. Similarly, Momo has rushed to the NASDAQ in the United States for listing. Whether it is video services or social media, communication services are inevitably used. As a leading cloud communication service provider in China, Ronglian Cloud Communication provides communication services to developers in the form of open APIs and SDKs.

51CTO interviewed Ronglian Cloud Communications CTO Xu Zhiqiang to explain to everyone: the key to the cloud communication platform supporting hundreds of millions of online users.

Reporter: Could you please tell us about your previous work experience and the business you are currently responsible for in the company?

Xu Zhiqiang: I graduated from the Department of Automatic Control Engineering of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1998. After graduation, I worked in a listed company to develop operator communication systems, from an ordinary R&D engineer to the head of R&D. I mainly provided value-added service systems for operators, including IVR voice services, call center systems, etc., and occupied a very large market share in China.

Before 2012, I had been working on business system development for traditional operators. However, with the development of mobile Internet in recent years, I have been thinking about how the communications industry will evolve in the mobile Internet era. It happened that Mr. Sun was incubating the Ronglian Cloud Communications project within Gaoyang Shengsiyuan (formerly the parent company of Ronglian Cloud Communications) and invited me to join in this endeavor. I thought this was a good direction, so I joined Ronglian Cloud Communications and was responsible for technical research and development.

Reporter: There is no localized model for communication business in China, so it is not smooth on the cloud network, and SKY's communication is all run on foreign servers. What do you think are the differences between the domestic and foreign communication industries?

Xu Zhiqiang: The main reason is that the business focus is different. China focuses more on value-added telecommunication services. Asia has always been in the leading position in value-added telecommunication services. For example, ringback tone services originated in South Korea. From the perspective of telecommunication value-added services alone, Europe and the United States are relatively backward.

One of the important reasons why Twilio, a foreign cloud communication service provider, has been successful is that it has realized the SP access of SMS, unlike China Mobile Dream Network, which has been providing value-added services for SMS for a long time. This part of the business in foreign countries has not been developed and opened before, so after the rise of mobile Internet, there are many demands for voice verification codes, notifications, etc. Twilio first packaged the SMS capability and gave it to merchants to send SMS notifications, and then gradually expanded to support voice, IVR and other services, gradually growing and developing. In addition, foreign cloud communication services focus on the provision of virtual numbers. You can apply for a number at any time, in any country, and use this number to call your mobile phone or any system you set, including some IVR systems. There is not much demand in this area in China at present.

Reporter: At present, cloud computing PaaS services in China are not very mature and require certain technical thresholds. How to balance the cost and initial investment in building a PaaS platform? How do you view the current PaaS market?

Xu Zhiqiang: The imperfection of PaaS is closely related to the overall environment. First of all, PasS relies on the network and IaaS. It must have a good infrastructure and basic network environment so that the PaaS platform can have a better development environment. For start-ups, it is impossible to deploy points across the country on a large scale. When the number of users suddenly increases, it is impossible to expand the capacity at any time. This is the main reason for the immaturity of the previous PaaS platform. However, with the development of IaaS services such as Alibaba Cloud in China, the domestic PaaS platform has gradually matured. It greatly reduces the cost of building the PaaS platform, so that the initial investment in the PaaS platform does not need to be too much.

The PaaS platform still has great market prospects, especially after the rise of mobile Internet. One very important phenomenon of the rise of mobile Internet is that the threshold for entrepreneurship has been lowered, which has made entrepreneurship easier. A few people can start a business by developing an app in a few months. The pace has become faster. Things that may have required a large team in the past can now be done by just a few people. This requires many PaaS platforms like us that provide different capabilities. We provide corresponding technical support, and mobile developers focus on business capabilities.

Reporter: How does the PaaS platform shorten the development cycle of mobile developers?

Xu Zhiqiang: Only with supporting PaaS or IaaS solutions can the cycle be shortened. Just like in the past, when making an APP, you need to count the number of mobile phone activations yourself, but now through the PaaS provider, it is very easy to get data by embedding the SDK. If you use our cloud communication PaaS service, you may be able to develop a WeChat phone book application in a few days, which was unthinkable in the past. The mobile Internet model has prompted more people to use this kind of PaaS and IaaS services. I think it is the benefit brought by the current changes in the overall environment. Our PaaS platform can be developed at this time, which is inseparable from the overall environment getting better and better.

Reporter: How do you identify the quality of mobile cloud communications? What dimensions do you use to monitor it?

Xu Zhiqiang: The most important indicator for measuring the quality of cloud communication platform services is availability. If the system fails every other day, users will feel that the service is unusable, so high reliability comes first. The second is the quality of the communication service itself, which includes a series of monitoring parameters such as your call quality, response time, and call connection rate. The third is the quality of services such as customer service and technical support, because the PaaS platform sells services. The quality of your service to users, such as the response time and resolution time of user issues, are important factors in measuring the quality of cloud communication platform services.

Reporter: 4G networks began to develop last year. What impact will this have on cloud communications?

Xu Zhiqiang: First of all, I think the better the network environment, the more beneficial it is for cloud communication platform services, because cloud communication platform services are different from traditional website services. Websites can wait for loading, but if I call you and suddenly I can't hear the sound, or the sound quality is very poor, the user experience will be very poor, so 4G network will be more adaptable to cloud communication platform services. In addition, operators are now launching the VolTE standard on 4G, which makes the entire call based on one IP and can ensure the smoothness of network calls. In terms of video, since the broadband requirements are much higher than voice calls, 4G networks provide better network bandwidth and lower network latency, so that video-based services can get better quality.

Reporter: If an enterprise wants to customize and access cloud communication services, what are their needs? After joining, what kind of technical support will we provide in the early stage and deployment process? How long will it take to apply it?

Xu Zhiqiang: Our cloud communications are all based on interfaces, so they do not have high requirements for the deployment environment. In order to allow users to access as quickly as possible, we have simply encapsulated many capabilities and provided DEMOs for many services for users to refer to. These DEMOs can be used with a little modification. We also have a professional technical support team to help customers solve various technical problems encountered when using our system capabilities.

The length of access time depends on the user's ability to use it. The voice verification code capability mentioned above is the simplest and can be used directly, which can take one or two hours at the fastest and up to one day at the slowest. However, for some more complex ones, such as call centers, there are many interactive operations in them, and the access time is relatively longer.

Reporter: From the perspective of the cloud communication platform, it has many similarities and integrations with virtual operators. What are the main fits? In 2015, the virtual operator was the last year of the national pilot period. Many people were not optimistic about its development and basically had a mentality of crossing the river by feeling the stones. What is Ronglian Cloud Communication's consideration in this regard?

Xu Zhiqiang: Because virtual operators are currently "lame", they only have the ability to resell mobile services, and the only connection with the operator's big pipeline is the Boss billing system, so it is difficult to carry out business. However, we believe that the opening of operators is the general trend, but the process may be a bit tortuous and require constant bargaining. Cloud communication's business and virtual operators have a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences. We are more To B, providing capabilities, not products, while virtual operators are more To C, providing products. So you can see that many virtual operators cooperate with us and use our services to provide products and services to their users.

Reporter: There are many privacy concerns about call records and call content on the PaaS platform, and developers are also worried. What good methods does Ronglian Cloud Communication have in this regard?

Xu Zhiqiang: First of all, the platform definitely has records of various call records, which is the same as the operator system. Every call you make will have a call record, which is also the basis for our charges. What the PaaS platform must ensure is that these call records will not be illegally or unauthorizedly obtained. To this end, we have adopted sandbox isolation, hierarchical permissions, encrypted storage and other methods to protect call records.

As for the protection of call content, which users are more concerned about, we and domestic encryption manufacturers provide a secure call protection solution based on national encryption to ensure that calls cannot be intercepted. In addition, users can also directly choose the encryption solution. Our SDK provides the corresponding interface to call the user's encryption. The cloud communication platform is only used as a transmission channel. Only the user can decrypt it. The cloud communication platform itself cannot decrypt the call content.

Both of our solutions mentioned above have partners, such as the Institute of Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, whose confidential communication system currently uses the solution we provide.

Reporter: In the future development of PaaS, it is necessary to strengthen one's core competitiveness and future investment is proportional. However, in order to consolidate competitive advantages, I personally believe that it is still necessary to establish one's own ecosystem. Does Ronglian Cloud Communications have any plans in this regard?

Xu Zhiqiang: A PaaS platform must have an ecosystem. When users use your product, solve their problems, or make money, your platform can grow and develop. Therefore, we have made a lot of investment in building an ecosystem, including supporting some partners, using our channels and capital relationships to help cloud communication-based partners grow bigger and stronger. In addition, we are constantly collecting users' pain points in communication needs and capabilities, providing them with solutions to their problems, and constantly improving our cloud communication platform.

In terms of core competitiveness, we aim at two aspects: "one is to make it simple, the other is to make it in-depth". Making it simple means greatly lowering the threshold of the PaaS platform and making the ability calling method compact so that users can access it very easily. Making it in-depth means continuing to increase investment and energy in some core technologies, especially in video. As the mobile network environment gets better and better, the application scenarios based on video will have explosive growth. In order to ensure the quality of video, we will spend more research and development on the core technology of video.

summary:

Premier Li Keqiang clearly proposed to open up basic telecommunication services at a recent State Council meeting. Whether operators are willing or not, opening up is the general trend. If they fail to embrace the changes of the Internet with an open attitude, even traditional monopoly industries will face a severe test. How the communications industry will develop in 2015, we will have to wait and see.