Margin brawl《利润之争》[E介俗人][经济学人](伪)精读2022.09.03The Economist

 NO.1  

点击蓝字 关注我们

Margin brawl

利润之争

The cloud-computing giants are battling to protect fat margins

Amazon, Google and Microsoft are offering higher-end, stickier service

WHEN CHIEF executives ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, it is usually because their firm has just gone public.

1. ring the bell,按铃

2. 一般说一篇文章的开头句，尤其是英语文章，会点明整篇文章的主旨主题。但这里作者给大家构建了一个想象的机会。作者说，一般大家去敲钟，肯定是公司上市了。那有不“通常”的情况吗？

When Adam Selipsky did so on June 27th, he was celebrating a tie-up with the bourse. He is the boss of Amazon Web Services(AWS), (the tech giant’s cloud-computing arm), and the deal is part of the exchange’s shift of its stockmarkets to AWS’s cloud.

3.       Bourse 证券交易所

4.       (the tech giant’s cloud-computing arm)插入语，用来形容AWS。这里用了arm，除了有手臂的意思，当然还有我们熟悉的军队，武器等。这里指a division of some larger or more complex organization，相当于分支，部门等。

5.       最后作者揭开谜底，原来Adam不仅仅是去敲钟，还有另一个任务：把纳斯达克的股票交易数据转换到AWS里面去。（把纳斯达克变成自己的甲方了。）

Tailored features include data transfer with minimal delay, which should please high-frequency traders. Nasdaq’s customers will be able to use AWS’s advanced analytics tools, such as machine learning (ML), through the stock exchange’s platform.

6.       Tailored=customized定制的

The deal, first announced last November, came weeks after Alphabet, Google’s parent company, unveiled a similar tie-up between GCP, its cloud offering, and CME, one of the world’s biggest derivatives exchanges.

7.       一个重点长难句。first announced last November把主语deal和后面的谓语动词came割裂开；Google’s parent company作为Alphabet的同位语，把Alphabet（主语）和unveiled（谓语）割裂开；between和and连接了两个内容，分别是GCP和CME。其中，its cloud offering是GCP的同位语，而CME后面的内容是其同位语。

8.       Derivatives （金融）衍生品

A day before that deal was struck Microsoft Azure announced the rollout of its financial-services cloud. Clients include Morgan Stanley and HSBC, two banks. Not-so-big tech is wading in, too: IBM and Oracle also offer financial clouds.

9.       Rollout=release 发布，推出

10.    Wading in: wade: To wade is to walk through water. Wading in这里表示涉猎，步入，开始进入等

Competition in the cloud is billowing. Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft have together invested almost $120bn in the past 12 months, most of it in data centres and the servers that power them. Amazon and Microsoft have seen their capital expenditure as a share of revenue rise by almost five percentage points in the past five years to 13% (see chart 1). Customers, increasingly irked by sky-high bills, are opting for more than one cloud service for fear of lock-in. “It’s not a winner-take-all market,” says an executive at a big cloud provider. Tech giants are battling to gain the upper hand.

11.    Billowing    汹涌向前; 大量冒出;巨浪等

12.    Competition in the cloud is billowing.这句话可以进行仿写或改写，如competition in garment industry is billowing. 下次再说内卷，是不是可以这样说呢？

13.    Irked 使激怒

14.    Sky-high bills天价账单

15.    Winner-take-all 赢家通吃

16.    Upper hand= A position of control or advantage.

17.    这段呼应了前面的副标题= The cloud-computing giants are battling to protect fat margins 这个市场不仅亚马逊或微软等头部在争夺，中部玩家同样不遗余力的在竞争。

All this should be putting pressure on stratospheric profits. AWS accounts for three-quarters of Amazon’s operating income. Before this year’s tech-stock slump some analysts reckoned it could become a $1trn firm if spun out. Microsoft’s Azure is thought to be just as profitable. Google, by contrast, is taking a hit as it tries to gain market share. It racked up $3.3bn in cloud-related operating losses over the past 12 months, around 1% of Alphabet’s revenue.

18.    Stratospheric adj. stratosphere 是名词。原意指平流层，在商业中可以指An extremely high or the highest point or degree on a ranked scale: business expenses in the stratosphere.即非常高。这里用stratospheric来形容profits,可想而知为什么巨头们都想wading in这个市场。

19.    Accounts for 占了

20.    本段主要是对两个巨头的情况再做一个介绍。

For now there is little sign of a margin squeeze. On July 28th AWS reported an operating margin of 29%, four times that of Amazon’s retail business. Azure’s margins, which Microsoft does not reveal, are believed to be steady, too. Google’s cloud segment cut its operating losses from 16% of revenue in the previous quarter to 14%.

21.    Margin指The difference between the cost and the selling price，一般在商业上简单理解为profit就好。Margin squeeze利润的挤压，利润的侵蚀等。

22.    这段第一句就说，目前来看，尽管竞争激烈，但他们的利润并没减少。这段还是介绍了两大巨头的利润情况。

A combination of a fast-growing industry, hardware improvements and barriers to switching providers explains why margins have been elevated. But some of these factors are transient. The cloud giants are therefore preparing for a squeeze by trying to sell higher-margin software and by making their services even stickier. The result could be a vast cloud market offering a range of new capabilities to customers.

23.    承接上一段讲巨头的利润并没有被压缩，为什么呢？这里讲了三点：a fast-growing industry, hardware improvements and barriers.

24.    但是，这里面的部分（对利润产生影响的）因素是很短暂的。因此，云计算巨头们正准备通过尝试销售利润率更高的软件并使他们的服务更具粘性来应对挤压。

Cloud computing, still in its early days, is growing rapidly. AWS created the industry in 2006 as a way to make money from its excess storage capacity by offering to host other companies’ data. GCP joined the fray two years later, followed by Azure in 2010. Partly because it moved first, AWS has 34% of the cloud-infrastructure market, still the largest share (see chart 2), according to data from Synergy Research Group. But Azure and GCP have made gains.

25.    这段话切换了一点点话题，从前面云计算的利润讲到了云计算的历史。这里讲了AWS诞生的原因。建议有兴趣的同学去搜索一下亚马逊的“飞轮效应”，看看AWS在这里面，包括对亚马逊整体的营收产生什么样的影响。

This year global sales from the entire industry are forecast to surpass $495bn, according to Gartner, a research firm. That includes an ecosystem of firms selling services on top of or related to the cloud, such as Okta, a maker of authentication software, and MongoDB, a database firm. It could grow to more than $1trn by 2030. Today only 30% of enterprise workloads—applications, software programs or work that would have been run on a local server—have been shifted to the cloud.

26.    前半段话讨论了这个行业未来的前景，后面更详细的介绍了：时至今日，企业的只有30%的事项从本地端切换到了云端。因此前景无限大。

Revenues of the big three “hyperscalers” are still growing at a decent clip. Last quarter AWS’s sales grew by 33% compared with the same quarter a year ago. Azure and GCP managed 40% and 36% respectively. Amazon and Google both have a backlog of multi-year contracts that are yet to be reported as sales of $100bn and $50bn respectively. (Microsoft does not publish this number.) Such growth has meant less pressure on margins.

27.    Hyperscalers 这里也指巨头们

28.    Backlog 积压，库存

29.    这段文章前面仍在讨论，两家巨头的可怕的增长。最后一句话总结是，他们的利润下降在增长面前仍不是太难看。把前面的内容重新再点一遍。

The firms have also managed to cut the costs of hardware by making better use of old machines. Servers need to be upgraded less frequently than first thought, making clouds cheaper to run. The three tech giants have announced extensions to their average server lifetime from three to four years. On July 28th Microsoft went one better and said that it was extending it to six years, saving the firm about $4bn in 2023. AWS is still running some of the servers it bought in 2006.

30.    内卷怎么破？降本增效咯。通过更好的利用旧机器，降低升级的频率来延长服务器的平均寿命。这可以省钱。

Taking chip design in-house has cut the costs of hardware by winning back margin from chip suppliers. AWS’s Graviton chips, designed by a team it acquired in 2015, lead the market. Google offers Tensor Processing Units, designed to boost ML capabilities, among other silicon. Microsoft is said to be trying to develop custom chips, too. In January it poached one of Apple’s top chip designers. Even as costs have fallen, prices have not followed suit, keeping margins high.

31.    这几段文章的一个重点仍然是，如何把margins做高，维持高利润。这里提到的另一个点就是自研芯片。在管理学里面，这个叫backward integration后向一体化，意思是厂家向上合并或者对上游供应链的物品、原料和功能进行承接，自行实施。比如说，汽车生产者（厂家），本来是向某品牌采购轮胎和座椅，现在为了更好的控制成本、质量和防止Hold-up（敲竹杠）问题的出现，厂家自行投资建厂，或者购买上游厂家的股份，把零件的生产控制在自己手中。

32.    Poach 偷猎，偷捕;

Margins are also protected by the fact that few companies have moved workloads from cloud to cloud. David Linthicum of Deloitte, a consultancy, says firms like to have the ability to switch but have rarely done so. One reason is that the benefit may be small, while costs can be prohibitive. Hyperscalers charge “egress” fees for moving data out of their cloud.

33.    这一段从另一个点来解释，为什么Margins利润会被很好的维持：几乎没有公司会切换自己的云服务供应商。首先，对于企业而言（甲方）这样做的成本太高，且收益太小。同时，巨头们还会收取“切换”费用以防止用户流失。

波特五力模型的其中一点就是潜在进入者的议价能力。巨头们收取的“egress”出口费用就是提高潜在进入者的门槛，以构筑自身的护城河。

Another barrier to switching has been that cloud providers tend to cater to different markets. AWS started as a service for developers and many of its clients are tech startups. Microsoft, by contrast, is more focused on large organisations. It uses its long-established enterprise-software business to cross-sell Azure. Like AWS, GCP’s customers are more often tech startups, partly because of its reputation for use of advanced technologies, though it also bundles cloud services with its advertising and productivity offerings for big customers.

34.    前面一段讲了切换云服务商的barrier，就是收取“egress” fees。这里讲了另一点，就是不同的云服务商是针对不同的细分市场的（cater to different markets）。针对不同的segment，不同的云服务商有各自的强项。在战略管理里面，波特大佬曾经提出过Three generic strategies。简单而言，只有3种战略（当然后面拓展到了5种，并且这个理论已经很多年。），就是差异化，成本领先和聚焦战略三种。这里巨头们就通过聚焦不同的niche市场来获得相应的margins。

The worry now for cloud providers, however, is that the factors that supported margins are starting to give way. The hyperscalers are increasingly hunting on each others’ turf. AWS and GCP are hiring ever bigger sales teams to help target large businesses. Microsoft is trying to increase its appeal to techies. It offers free Azure services to startups, including some provided by Github, a system for tracking changes in software code, which Microsoft acquired in 2018.

35.    Turf，地盘，势力范围。hunting on each others’ turf在彼此的地盘上打猎，意思是互相抢占对方的细分市场。

36.    画风一转，作者说，之前支撑巨头们margins的优势慢慢开始瓦解。上一段说到，各巨头有着自己的细分市场以及具体的用户群。但为了保持业绩的增长（太卷了），巨头们不得不开始混战，互相抢占对方的市场，进入对方的优势客户区域。

Egress fees may be falling, too. AWS cut some in December. Big customers are said to be able to negotiate discounts, sometimes forcing the tech giants to waive them completely. Costs may start to climb as the limits on extending server life are reached. And, crucially, growth will slow as the industry matures. One executive says that he expects competition to push margins down in the medium term. He also thinks that there is room for more competitors further up the “tech stack”.

37.    承接上文，作者在这段话中细数margins将会减少的种种情形，包括巨头们不得不降低Egress fees（切换费用）和服务器的寿命将至等。同样，整个行业不断的成熟也会导致竞争的加剧和利润的下滑。

38.    tech stack直译过来是技术堆栈。根据公开资料，“技术堆栈”一词描述了一组应用程序,数字工具和平台,供货商,数据源或编程语言,它们组合在一起以提供战略业务功能。放到句子中去理解的话，就是巨头们将会提供更多服务，包括各种软硬件类去竞争。

Faced with the prospect of dwindling margins, the hyperscalers are trying to move up the tech stack themselves. One promising area is building software that runs on top of their servers for specific industries. Selling software is more profitable than selling hardware, because costs are lower and scaling easier. And software can be stickier too: it is easier for a hospital to change its data-storage providers than the providers of its health-records database. The trend is showing up in hiring, say executive recruiters. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have been busy hiring bosses from various industries with the aim of selling cloud services back to the sorts of business they came from.

39.    Dwindling:To become gradually less until little remains.

40.    the hyperscalers are trying to move up the tech stack themselves 面对更加激烈的竞和将下滑的利润，巨头们尝试去“技术堆栈”，例如去搭建一些基于特定行业用户的服务器的软件。同时作者指出，卖软件肯定比卖硬件更profitable啦。

41.    这里作者同样解释了两点原因：1）economic of scale规模效应和 marginal cost。由于软件的可复制性，它的边际成本会不断降低逐渐至0。互联网产品很多都是通过这一点，前期疯狂营销圈地，后面成本降低后就可以慢慢开始盈利。2）软件的用户黏性更强。

The cloud providers offer software for a range of organisations, from gaming firms and government to finance, as the AWS-Nasdaq deal demonstrates. They are buying their way into a health-care cloud, too. In 2021 Microsoft announced the acquisition of Nuance, a health-care cloud provider, for $20bn. In June AWS invested in Oben Health and PeerCapsule, two health startups. The same month Oracle closed a $28bn deal to buy Cerner, which develops electronic health-record software.

Another draw is high-end analytics, using techniques such as artificial intelligence (AI) and ML. Microsoft offers 26 such services, Amazon 25 and Google 12. Customers can analyse video images, convert speech to text and receive recommendations for improving their code. Google and Microsoft have invested heavily in quantum computing. The idea is to sell something that is difficult to replace, making switching harder. “The AI and ML offerings are all unique. They are done in radically different ways,” notes Mark Moerdler of Bernstein, a broker.

42.    这里承接上上一段的内容，前面提到，面对激烈的竞争，巨头们开始自己进行tech stack。这一段作者指出了另一点，就是一些高端的分析功能。包括量子计算等等。这些功能推出的目的就是使的这些产品难以被替代。又回到波特五力模型这里，巨头们提高潜在进入者的门槛，防止用户流失，构筑了更高的护城河。

The shift towards software may not necessarily prove a huge success for cloud providers. Regulators are unlikely to look kindly at big tech’s attempts to dominate cloud-based IT services. And plenty of firms, such as Databricks and Snowflake, already sell cloud-based software. Customers will probably balk at being locked into a tech giant’s software services, much as they do with storage services.

43.    Balk at: To be hesitant about doing something or to refuse to do it.

44.    这里画风又转，作者说，向软件转变呢，可能也不是很好。首先，政府就不愿意巨头们进行垄断，因为这个市场上已经有相关的服务商在提供服务了。

Even so, the push shows where the cloud industry could go. Firms first adopted cloud computing to gain flexibility and to cut spending on data centres. Now advanced analytics that sit on top of the cloud could offer customers new capabilities. Grocery stores use AI and video cameras to know when to restock shelves; Cirque du Soleil uses similar technology to analyse the emotional reactions of its audience when performers undertake death-defying stunts. Such new ML capabilities, delivered by the cloud at lower prices and combined with more data, greatly expand the upper bound of the cloud-computing market, notes Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley.

45.    Upper bound上限

46.    话又说回来，这种转变带来新的能力、技术是对甲方更有益的。作者在后面列举了很多。最后引用摩根士丹利的一位大佬的话说，云计算市场还是有很大潜力的！

These are the types of things that Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, is referring to when he says that IT’s share of GDP could double in a decade. If true, then dominance of the cloud market is worth fighting for. And the war is only just getting started

47.    文章的最后一段，作者引用了微软老板的话，指出IT行业占GDP的比重将会在未来10年翻一倍。假如真的是这样的话，这场云计算市场的硬战仍是值得投入的。但这个战争才刚刚开始。

总结I

单词

3.Bourse

4.the tech giant's cloud-computing arm

6.Tailored=customized定制的

8.Derivatives （金融）衍生品

11.Billowing 汹涌向前; 大量冒出;巨浪等

13.Irked 使激怒

18.Stratospheric &stratosphere

27.Hyperscalers

28.Backlog 积压，库存

32.Poach 偷猎，偷捕;

33.egress

35.Turf,地盘，势力范围

39.Dwindling: To become gradually less until little remains.

短语

9.Rollout=release 发布，推出

10.Wading in: wade: To wade is to walk through water.

 Wading in这里表示涉猎，步入，开始进入等

15.Winner-take-all 赢家通吃

16.Upper hand= A position of control or advantage

35.hunting on each others' turf在彼此的地盘上打猎，意思是互相抢占对方的细分市场。

43.Balk at: To be hesitant about doing something or to refuse to do it.

45.Upper bound上限

句式

12.Competition in the cloud is billowing.

总结II

By E介俗人

云计算市场风起云涌，最终谁能笑看风云？

作者从不同的角度讲述了云计算市场的激烈竞争（卷）。同时，各家在面对利润下滑的可能性做出相应的应对措施。作者认为，随着竞争继续和市场不断成熟，各种应对措施可能不再有效。这场竞争才刚刚开始。

这篇文章除了能给我们提供一个对云计算市场的一个基本认识之外，我认为从各巨头的商业表现中，我们能看到各种管理知识的实际运用，包括波特五力模型、纵向一体化和细分市场等等战略上的行为与措施。

商业市场发展飞速，稍有不慎，便会落后于他人。不断提高我们的商业敏锐力，判断力和分析能力，才是我们不懈的追求与努力的方向。