The cloud over cloud companies - FT中文網
登錄×
電子郵件/用戶名
密碼
記住我
請輸入郵箱和密碼進行綁定操作:
請輸入手機號碼,透過簡訊驗證(目前僅支援中國大陸地區的手機號):
請您閱讀我們的用戶註冊協議私隱權保護政策,點擊下方按鈕即視爲您接受。
FT商學院

The cloud over cloud companies

The sector has been left behind in the euphoria over artificial intelligence sweeping through the stock market
00:00

{"text":[[{"start":7.4,"text":"There is one notable corner of the tech world that has not been touched by the artificial intelligence euphoria sweeping through the stock market. "}],[{"start":15.06,"text":"If generative AI really does represent the next great sales opportunity for the tech industry, then software companies ought to be among the biggest winners. "},{"start":22.927,"text":"After all, most AI is likely to show up as enhanced features in the business software that companies rely on in their daily operations. "}],[{"start":31.32,"text":"However, the BVP Nasdaq index of cloud software companies is down nearly 10 per cent this year, while the Nasdaq Composite is up more than 20 per cent. "},{"start":40.587,"text":"It has also halved from its pandemic-era peak. "},{"start":43.403999999999996,"text":"The slump points to an industry at a crossroads. "},{"start":46.109,"text":"A long, secular growth phase driven by the rise of the cloud looks like it is entering a new and more mature state, while the next (the spread of generative AI in business) has barely begun. "}],[{"start":56.94,"text":"At times like this, Wall Street faces complex questions. "},{"start":60.843999999999994,"text":"If the cloud business really is maturing, the focus of investors needs to shift more quickly from growth to value. "},{"start":66.987,"text":"Tech companies that recently reported disappointing results, such as Salesforce, MongoDB and Workday, have tried to pass the lull off as the result of extended economic weakness. "},{"start":76.717,"text":"But the longer it goes on, the harder this argument is to sustain. "},{"start":80.347,"text":"Salesforce’s revenues doubled in the past four years to $36bn: at that scale, the slower 10 per cent growth it has projected for next year begins to look more like the norm. "}],[{"start":91.25999999999999,"text":"At the same time, investors have to handicap which companies will catch the next wave of growth and which will fail to adapt and be left in the dust. "}],[{"start":99.07,"text":"According to the companies themselves, the lack of an impact on their sales from AI is just a timing issue. "},{"start":104.937,"text":"Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, for instance, points to the challenge of training large armies of salespeople to handle the harder, more complex task of selling AI services. "},{"start":115.00399999999999,"text":"Customers are grappling with a wide set of questions, seeking to understand how the new AI models work and how their workers should interact with them. "},{"start":122.297,"text":"They also need to consider how to redesign their work processes to make best use of the technology, as well as deal with new threats to the security of their data. "}],[{"start":131.23,"text":"Even if sales are still negligible, the software companies report huge interest from customers in piloting their new AI services. "},{"start":138.522,"text":"This may mean the AI dividend has just been delayed. "}],[{"start":142.60999999999999,"text":"Yet the disruptive threats from AI suggest things will not be so straightforward. "},{"start":147.12699999999998,"text":"One is the upheaval to the cloud companies’ business model. "},{"start":150.28199999999998,"text":"Most rely on charging per-seat subscriptions, meaning their revenue goes up in line with the number of workers using their services. "},{"start":157.01199999999997,"text":"If generative AI works as promised and makes workers far more productive, customers should be able to do more with fewer staff. "}],[{"start":164.6,"text":"The result has been a pivot towards consumption-based pricing, or charging based on how much the new services are actually used. "},{"start":171.47899999999998,"text":"Tying fees to usage has the added advantage of offsetting some of the higher cost of delivering generative AI. "},{"start":177.322,"text":"But unless this leads to real and demonstrable business benefits, the software companies could face a backlash when customers see their bills soar. "}],[{"start":185.13,"text":"The software groups also have tech history to contend with. "},{"start":188.722,"text":"In the past, new tech eras — such as the rise of client-server computing in the 1990s and cloud computing the following decade — have brought new waves of start-up software companies to the fore. "},{"start":199.077,"text":"New companies, their products and business models designed from the ground up to fit a new computing paradigm start with a big advantage. "}],[{"start":206.82999999999998,"text":"The first wave of these “AI native” software companies has often looked like little more than “wrappers” around the large language models, adding only a veneer of industry-specific expertise as they offer businesses ways to adopt generative AI. "},{"start":219.05899999999997,"text":"But they are all working hard to gain a foothold from where they can start to build out more compelling services. "}],[{"start":225.17,"text":"According to Salesforce’s Benioff, the incumbents will be hard to unseat. "},{"start":229.624,"text":"Companies such as his have become the repositories of their customers’ most important data, he says, giving them a big advantage when it comes to training the AI models that businesses will find truly useful. "}],[{"start":240.95,"text":"That will only count if today’s cloud companies can adapt their own products and processes to the new technology fast enough. "},{"start":247.45399999999998,"text":"For now, Wall Street is suspending judgment. "}],[{"start":250.20999999999998,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/161811-1720228864.mp3"}

版權聲明:本文版權歸FT中文網所有,未經允許任何單位或個人不得轉載,複製或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵權必究。

向費利佩國王扔泥巴不會留下任何汙點

西班牙君主在瓦倫西亞洪災後受到的羞辱有助於發泄公衆的憤怒--但解決危機還有更好的辦法。

弗朗西斯•福山:肆無忌憚的川普對美國和世界意味著什麼?

共和黨人正在開創美國政治的新時代,也許對整個世界來說也是如此。

川普的政策如何推動液化天然氣供應浪潮

市場已經在爲供應過剩做準備,這可能會降低歐洲天然氣價格。

爲什麼把我們帶到頂峯的往往是運氣,而不是才華

沒有人願意承認這一點,但人生的彩票在成功中起著重要作用。

如果書籍是快樂的源泉,孩子們會爲了快樂而閱讀

我們需要出版商專注於好故事,而不是成人理想和名人作家。

世界之間的橋樑——連接與分裂的故事

加文•弗朗西斯的沉思遊記從歷史和地理角度出發,探索橋樑如何也能成爲障礙。
設置字型大小×
最小
較小
默認
較大
最大
分享×