Exclusive Interview With Zhou Bowen, President Of Jingdong Zhilian Cloud: "Twin" Digital China Is Born

Zhou Bowen has been very busy in the days since the 2020 China International Trade in services Fair (hereinafter referred to as "the fair").

Before receiving an exclusive interview with the 21st century economic reporter, the IEEE fellow, chairman of the technical committee of Jingdong group and President of Jingdong Zhilian cloud, just finished the speech of "Jingdong Zhilian cloud Enterprise Forum" on the spot of the service trade fair. He kept coming back to his office near the venue, and was following up on the forum online.

After the interview, Zhou Bowen went to Jingdong's booth at the service trade fair to explain the business to some customers in person. The audience is not only limited to the exhibition stand, but also some customers participate in the interaction through live broadcast online.

"I've been switching between the physical world and the digital world," Zhou explained to the 21st century business reporter, his manner revealing his excitement at the moment. "I can talk to you here as an atom, and I can participate in a meeting in another space as a bit. In this process, I have been switching between "atom" and "bit"

"Boundless" is the biggest feature of this year's service trade fair. The core supporting this feature is the "cloud service trade fair" digital platform created by Jingdong Zhilian cloud, the official technology provider of the service trade association. Different from the previous large number of online activities and conferences, this fair not only has the online version of "cloud service trade fair", but also connects online and offline, making the digital platform the "twin" of offline exhibition.

In fact, it is not only the exhibition industry, but also the "twinning" of Digital China, such as industrial Internet and smart city. "The core point of the twin concept is that the physical world and the digital world must interact," Zhou told the 21st century economic report. "By mapping the physical world to the digital world, and using algorithms to optimize every process, link and experience, and then mapping the optimization results back to the physical world, the efficiency of the physical world can be greatly and sustainably improved."

"Boundless" service trade association

Looking back on history in the future, this fair is destined to be a special existence.

"Relying on the technology empowerment of Jingdong Convention and Exhibition cloud, the digital platform of the service trade fair has carried out technological innovation around the three exhibition core scenes of" exhibition, discussion and negotiation ", breaking through the limitations of time, space and language, and carrying out a comprehensive digital and intelligent upgrade in the whole business process of exhibition, forum, negotiation, signing and operation management." Zhou Bowen pointed out.

Smoothing the boundary is the biggest feature of the "cloud service trade fair" digital platform, which is first reflected in the whole process and all-round digitization. Whether the exhibitors want to get all-round services through digital media before and after the exhibition, it refers to all-round services provided by exhibitors before and after the exhibition.

For example, through the cloud digital terminal, exhibitors and visitors can attend the fair at any time. Even within a month from the official launch of the platform in June to the service trade fair, there have been "impatient" businesses and exhibitors starting to carry out procurement docking.

According to reports, the conference has attracted 18000 enterprises and institutions from 148 countries and regions to hold online exhibitions. So far, more than 100000 people have participated in the conference in a single day, and nearly 200 forum meetings have been organized during the service trade fair.

Among them, there are also some organizations that may have missed out on the service trade association due to the outbreak of new crown pneumonia. Japan Trade Promotion Agency is one of them. As the organizer of the Japanese delegation, since 2012, the agency has organized a delegation to participate in the fair. This year, due to the epidemic situation, it is difficult to go to the scene in person. However, based on the cloud platform mode of the fair, they chose to build 3D booths online, with 18 Japanese enterprises in food, nursing, logistics and other industries.

Not only does online break the boundaries of time and place, but more importantly, the "unbounded" mode of online and offline integration has broken the imagination space of the exhibition itself. Whether it's online participation in forums or exhibitions, booking offline conference rooms, meeting interested customers, or even remotely participating in negotiations through live broadcast, all these functions can be realized on the digital platform. All kinds of participants in the exhibition can also switch between online and offline, bit and atom state to achieve the best experience.

Even, "unbounded service trade fair" has extended the traditional understanding of the exhibition chain. "Through the fully digital management mode, we have provided visualized data analysis function for exhibitors, combined with intelligent mining and business opportunity matching technology, and realized the efficient connection between exhibitors and purchasers." Zhou Bowen pointed out.

This means that in the exhibition, through user portrait analysis, the digital platform can show users the experience of thousands of people and thousands of aspects, and conduct intelligent analysis on users' click and browse, and form intelligent recommendation. From the perspective of exhibitors, users' tags, browsing time and traffic are also clear at a glance, so as to help find high-quality users.

"The digital exhibition is built online and offline." Zhou Bowen stressed to the 21st century economic reporter. In Zhou Bowen's view, this new form of service trade fair will become a landmark event, which means that the traditional exhibition industry will never go back to the past, "the integration of online and offline exhibitions will become an irreversible historical trend."

Twin Digital China

The birth of "unbounded service trade association" is just an epitome of "twin" Digital China.

"After the epidemic, we have seen the emergence and rapid development of a variety of new forms and models of digital economy, such as online education, remote office, contactless distribution, and so on." Zhou Bowen pointed out that "their rapid growth has accelerated the transformation of industrial digitization, thus a" twin "Digital China was born

In fact, "digital twin" is not a new concept. It refers to the real-time mapping of objects, systems, processes, etc. in the digital system through digital technology, so as to create a digital version of "clone" for virtual simulation of products, manufacturing and even factories, and then become the underlying logic and strong support to promote product innovation and performance improvement.

At present, digital twin has become a hot focus in the process of digital transformation. Recently, Gartner published the white paper "how to use digital twin to help enterprises create value?"? 》It is predicted that by 2021, half of large industrial enterprises will use digital twins, which will improve their efficiency by 10%; by 2024, more than 25% of new digital twins will be adopted as the binding function of new lot native business applications.

According to Zhou Bowen's judgment, the industrial Internet will be one of the important application scenarios of digital twin. Considering the continuity of production and manufacturing, the cost of shutdown and maintenance of many expensive equipment is huge. However, if sensors and cameras are set up on the production line, the AI analysis of data collection and accurate positioning of single parts can predict the situation of the production line in advance and give corresponding early warning.

Apart from the industrial Internet, twin technologies may be involved in everything from government affairs to smart cities. However, due to the current domestic digitization is still in the primary stage, there are also many challenges in the process of promoting digital twin. Many people from the government and traditional enterprises told the reporter of the 21st century economic report that there is a large demand for the project itself, but facing the digital tools provided by technology enterprises, they are often at a loss because they do not have the ability to develop technology.

"A typical case of digital transformation in China is that the level of secondary development based on tool platform of most enterprises or governments is limited, so there are two choices." Zhou Bowen suggested that institutions in need of digital transformation may allow Internet enterprises to build relevant systems through customization, but this method is undoubtedly more expensive, or they can find corresponding partners to integrate corresponding capabilities. "In terms of business logic of industrial digitization, we are exploring the first two paths.".