In 2019, Baidu announced cadre rotation adjustments for three vice presidents Shen Dou, Wu Haifeng, and Zheng Zibin. Baidu said that this rotation is to create an unprecedentedly prosperous and powerful Baidu mobile ecosystem, stimulate organizational innovation capabilities, and improve collaborative efficiency.
After three years, Baidu executives have been rotated again.
On May 5, 2022, Baidu founder, chairman and CEO Robin Li sent an all-staff email announcing the launch of a new round of cadre rotation: Baidu Group Executive Vice President Shen Dou will serve as the Intelligent Cloud Group (ACG) Person in charge; He Junjie was promoted to senior vice president of the group, and took a rotation as the head of Baidu Mobile Ecological Business Group (MEG); Wang Haifeng continued to serve as the group's executive vice president and CTO, and no longer served as the head of ACG.
The most striking thing about this adjustment is that Shen Dou, the former general manager of Baidu Mobile Ecosystem Group (MEG), turned to take over the Baidu Intelligent Cloud business.
What is the current development status of Baidu Intelligent Cloud?
At present, Baidu Smart Cloud has become an important engine driving Baidu's growth. According to Baidu's fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2021, Baidu's revenue for the whole of 2021 was 124.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%. Among them, Baidu Smart Cloud achieved revenue of 15.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 64%. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Baidu Smart Cloud’s revenue in the four quarters of 2021 was 2.8 billion yuan, 3.3 billion yuan, 3.8 billion yuan, and 5.2 billion yuan respectively, with year-on-year growth of 55%, 71%, and 73% respectively. ,60%. Maintaining a growth rate of more than 50% for four consecutive quarters is enough to prove the huge potential of Baidu Intelligent Cloud.
But at the same time, we see that although Baidu Smart Cloud has performed well in terms of revenue, it is still relatively lagging behind in the domestic market due to its late start. according to. The 2021 China Cloud Computing Market Report released by Canalys shows that the "Four Clouds in China" composed of Alibaba Cloud , Huawei Cloud , Tencent Cloud and Baidu Smart Cloud account for 80% of China's cloud computing market. Among them, Alibaba Cloud accounted for 37%, Huawei Cloud 18%, Tencent Cloud 16%, and Baidu Smart Cloud only 9%.
Why is Shen shaking?
As the head of Baidu's largest growth engine business, why did Shen Dou become the head of the cloud business?
Baidu explained that Shen Dou has made outstanding contributions to building a more prosperous Baidu mobile ecosystem in the past three years. He is expected to lead the ACG team to accelerate the implementation of the cloud-intelligence integration strategy and achieve quantitative changes to qualitative changes in scale and health. , establishing new contributions to the development of Baidu’s second curve.
According to data, Shen Dou graduated from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology . He has more than fifteen years of management and product development experience in leading technology companies in China and the United States. He is an explorer and practitioner in the field of artificial intelligence . He once worked at Microsoft The headquarters is responsible for R&D management related to search behavior and semantic advertising, and has always had a deep understanding of the industry.
In 2012, Shen Dou joined Baidu as deputy technical director and technical director of the Alliance R&D Department. Since then, he has served as senior technical director of the web search department, executive director of the financial services business group, head of FSG's overall R&D, and head of the APP & information flow business system. Until 2019, Shen Dou was promoted to senior vice president and became fully responsible for Baidu's mobile ecological business group.
While in charge of the mobile ecosystem business, Shen Dou promoted the establishment of a dual-engine mobile ecosystem of "search + information flow", enabling Baidu to complete the evolution from a search tool to an information flow ecological mechanism. On this basis, Baidu has completed its evolution from a search tool to an information flow ecological mechanism. In addition, he also reconstructed Baidu's original advertising system to improve monetization capabilities.
According to Baidu's fourth quarter and full-year financial report for 2021, Baidu's core revenue for the whole of 2021 was 95.1 billion yuan, of which online marketing revenue was 74 billion yuan, accounting for 77.73% of Baidu's core revenue.
In April 2021, Shen Dou released the "X+Y strategic layout", that is, by "making the platform wider and thicker, and vertical categories more refined and deeper" to promote the ecology to be service-oriented and personalized, making search better connect people and services. Data shows that in December 2021, Baidu App’s monthly active users reached 622 million, a year-on-year increase of 14%, and the proportion of daily logged-in users reached 82%, a record high. Both the total number of users and user stickiness have achieved breakthroughs. In addition, in terms of the three pillars of the mobile ecosystem: Baijiahao, smart mini programs and Baidu marketing hosting pages, Baidu Baijiahao has 4.2 million creators; the number of smart mini programs reaches 660,000, and the number of monthly active users reaches 418 million. Covering 271 industries; there are 500,000 merchants on the hosting page.
It can be seen that Shen Dou is in charge of the intelligent cloud business group. On the one hand, Shen Dou's position as vice president can enhance the internal voice of the intelligent cloud. Many resources in Baidu will be tilted towards the intelligent cloud; on the other hand, Shen Dou's technical background and sales system management capabilities, which can help Baidu Intelligent Cloud form a product system tailored to enterprise needs, thereby better serving customers.
Therefore, no matter from every aspect, Shen Dou is undoubtedly the best candidate.
Written at the end:
At present, the digital economy is developing rapidly, and the digital transformation of enterprises is in full swing, which has brought about an explosion of demand for the development of cloud computing . A report released by iiMedia Consulting shows that my country’s cloud computing market size has exceeded 230 billion yuan in 2021, and is expected to exceed 300 billion yuan in 2023.
Nowadays, all cloud vendors are sparing no effort to seize "turf". Shen Dou, who was once evaluated by Robin Li as "dare to fight tough battles and able to win battles", will contribute to the development of Baidu Intelligent Cloud in the context of increasingly fierce competition in the cloud market. What "new" ideas it will bring is worth looking forward to.
