Webscale Playbook Series - Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon and Baidu

Webscale network operators (WNOs) run large cloud networks using a mix of their own data centers and rented/leased assets. They invested $85.4B in capex in the first nine months of 2018 (YTD18), up an astounding 56% YoY. A range of vendors is benefiting, from semiconductor players selling into the data center market, to optical components & transport vendors selling into data center interconnect markets, to contract manufacturers of white box/OCP servers such as Wistron and Quanta, to IoT solutions providers. WNOs also spend about 10% of revenues on R&D, supporting projects in artificial intelligence, IoT, healthcare, food delivery, and connected cars. Many Webscale operators also design their own chips.

The "Webscale Playbook" series evaluates the technology & network strategies of leading WNOs, starting with Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Facebook, Microsoft, and Tencent.

The objective of each report is to assess the company's:

• Latest quarterly key performance indicators including revenues, capex, opex, R&D, etc.
• Top 3 spending-related (capex and R&D) priorities
• Data center/cloud infrastructure strategy
• Network vendor relationships, M&A, and partnerships across different network product categories
• Network-related strategy
• Disruptive impact on the network infrastructure market

The four Playbooks focus on two ecommerce players (Alibaba and Amazon), and two search specialists (Alphabet/Google, and Baidu). Collectively the four accounted for over $28B in capital expenditures (capex) in 2017, and $40B in R&D spending. This promotional bundle includes all four of these Playbooks at a significant discount from the individual purchase price.