By Zhuang Guangping
Rely on the organization of innovations to promote technical innovations so as to promote the application of innovations. In recent years, the software industry in Beijing has been adhering to the development strategy of joint innovations and a stride in the process of development has been thus realized. In 2007, operating revenues of the software industry in Beijing amounted to RMB125.2 billion yuan with a year-on-year growth margin of 28 percent, making Beijing the only city in which revenues made from software amounted to over RMB100 billion yuan in China.
From RMB78 billion yuan in 2005 to RMB97.2 billion yuan in 2006 and RMB125.2 billion yuan in 2007, the software industry has been developing rapidly. Behind such achievements, the key other than Beijing's regional advantage and the advantage in terms of talents is that two kinds of rules were followed and grasped: "Firstly, market rules shall be followed; that is, it is necessary to rely on the market mechanism and drive the development of the software industry by consummating the industrial chain. Secondly, rules in the industrial development shall be followed; that is, to achieve development by adopting the train of innovative thoughts instead of the road of 'imitation and substitution'." That is an interpretation given by Ma Lin, Director of the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission.
Three years ago, it was still an authentic portraiture of the status quo of the software industry in Beijing that "small enterprises gather together to compete with one another". "Almost all software enterprises started with one or two informatization project (s); almost all industry-oriented software companies had experienced a transition from making a lot of profits to making only tiny profits or just breaking even; and in almost all informatization markets in all industries, there converged competitors." When recalling the then status, Hu Qinghua, Director of Beijing Software Industry Productivity Center, repeated the collocation of "almost all" three times.
The scale of software enterprises is excessively small, and their capacity to integrate resources is insufficient. Therefore, the thinking of developing the software industry in Beijing by making use of the mechanism of alliance to integrate innovations has been made clear. It is proved in practice that such a development pattern of "alliances playing a leading role, association between strong enterprises, and making it possible for small enterprises to develop together with large enterprises" has brought exuberant vital force for the development of the software industry in Beijing.
Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance established in April 2005, which has become a "name card" for the integration and innovation of the software industry in Beijing, is a representative example. Driven by the Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance, the revenues of backbone enterprises in the Alliance from newly increased businesses increased by RMB760 million yuan in 2006 with supports from the Alliance in terms of technical standards and technical collaboration; and in 2007, their revenues increased by as much as RMB2.54 billion yuan, more than three times the growth margin for the previous year. Moreover, through establishing uniform technical strategies, standard product matching relations, and market-oriented commercial cooperation relations as well as the institutional form of alliance as entities, technical frameworks, technical standards, e-government, and application solutions in various industries, which are advocated by Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance, have become highly influential at home and abroad and have made it possible for member enterprises of those alliances to achieve an increment of nearly RMB1 billion yuan to their annual sales revenues, thus making the alliance an important carrier for software enterprises in China to conduct mechanism innovations and technical innovations.
"Industrial alliances will help to drive software enterprises falling into various categories to shape up their dedicated core capabilities, build up industrial chains and technical chains between enterprises, and convert the relation of homogeneous competition into the relation of competition and corporation." said Hu Qinghua.
Changfeng Open Standards Platform Software Alliance is not the only example; a batch of industrial alliances, including Intelligent Grouping & Resource Sharing Industrial Alliance, IPv6 Industry Alliance, Zhongguancun Software Outsource Alliance, Zhong Guan Cun Society of Creative Enterprises (ZGCS), had been founded with Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission as the organizer. Alliances of enterprises have accelerated the optimization of the structure of the software industry in Beijing while getting industrial chains integrated, thus becoming a backbone force to drive the development of the software industry in Beijing.
In 2006, the implementation of a major project of "Base of Knowledge on Informatization Within Various Industries and the Structure of the Service System" in Beijing started on basis of keeping to demands in the market; a batch of leading local software enterprises specialized in the informatization within key industry were selected out, and such enterprises were provided with supports in terms of funds.
The implementation of such a project accelerated the transformation of a batch of software enterprises within various industries from the low end of the value chain to the high end of the value chain, from simple system integration to high-end consultation within respective industries. Certain enterprises had their management pattern transformed from the tradition pattern of "confirming demands-scheme design-software customization-service and maintenance" into the pattern of "business consultation-product application-client-oriented modification", thus making it possible to cut short the delivery time, improve the quality of products, make clear specialized labor division while realizing the development towards the high end.
Through establishing and putting into application knowledge bases, such leading enterprise's core competitiveness has been enforced and the structure of respective enterprises' sales revenues has changed substantially: the proportion of revenues from high-end consultation services has increased from the former 10~15 percent to 35 percent. Also, such leading enterprises have gradually become leading software enterprises in the field of informatization in respective industries; for example, Sinosoft Co., Ltd. focuses on the insurance industry, Digital China Holdings Limited focuses on the banking industry and the strategic materials industry, Huadi Computer Group Co., Ltd. focuses on the tobacco monopoly industry, Taiji Computer Corporation Limited focuses on the public health sector, and Beijing HSHZ Information System Engineering Co., Ltd. focuses on the drug administration sector.
For the moment, the software industry in Beijing has realized key breakthroughs in core technologies in such fields as Chinese information processing, essential software, base of knowledge on informatization within various industries, software outsourcing platform, and large-scale network service. In 2006, there shaped up a cluster of leading products falling into 30 categories with the production value of nearly RMB15 billion yuan; and in 2007, the operating revenues of 206 enterprises added up to over RMB100 million yuan.
At the same time, software enterprise in Beijing has further accelerated their steps to "march abroad". Such products with independent intellectual property rights as the ERP software of UFIDA Software Co., Ltd., online games of Kingsoft Corporation Limited, the Chinese Handwriting Recognition technology of Hanwang Technology Co. Ltd., the desktop publishing system of Beijing Founder Electronics Co., Ltd., and antivirus software of Beijing Rising International Software Co., Ltd. have been launched in overseas market; and the competitiveness of their products have been greatly enhanced.
