The server operating system market share reached 36.8%, and the cumulative installed capacity exceeded 6.10 million sets. It is used in the core business of leading enterprises such as JD.com, Meituan, the three major operators, and the six major banks. Four years of open source, Euler’s leap-forward development has become a vivid footnote to the rise of domestic software. Facing the surging era of intelligence, our country’s innovative breakthroughs in basic software have built a solid foundation for digital infrastructure.
Euler’s rise to the top in the server market
"OpenEuler [open source Euler] has reached a share of 36.8%, far exceeding the second place’s share of about 20%," Zhou Zhengang, vice president of IDC China, revealed at the operating system conference 2023 on December 15.
According to IDC’s forecast released at the meeting, openEuler will have a 36.8% market share in China’s server operating system market in 2023, CentOS/Red Hat will have a 20.7% share, Windows will have a 19.3% share, Ubuntu/Debian will have a 10.1% share, and other Linux operating systems will have a 13.1% share.
At the conference with the theme of "Rising up the digital age, leading the future of digital intelligence", industry players told reporters that this data marks that Euler has become the first basic software in China to achieve the first market share, which is an important milestone in the development of China’s basic software industry and has created a solid and reliable software base for Digital China.
According to reports, openEuler originated from Huawei’s self-developed server operating system, EulerOS, and was open-sourced in September 2019. In September 2021, Huawei announced the upgrade of openEuler, which was upgraded from a server operating system to an operating system for digital infrastructure, supporting IT, CT, OT and other digital infrastructure scenarios. In November 2021, Huawei and all community partners donated openEuler to the Open Atom Open Source Foundation. Since then, Euler has realized the transformation from business owners to industry sharing and co-construction. In the past year, Euler has accelerated its development and established a complete development system in technological innovation, ecological development, community cooperation, and commercial implementation, forming a positive industrial cycle.
"This shows that the roots of the Chinese operating system have been established," said Liu Wenqing, vice chairperson of the openEuler committee.
According to Jiang Dayong, chairperson of the openEuler committee and assistant to the chairperson of the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation, there is an "ecological rift" in the open source community. When the market share exceeds 19%, a self-cycle can be formed. For Euler, a share of more than 20% is the key point, and a share of more than 35% forms a self-acceleration. "In the past, the development of ecological partners was all community initiative, but now users and partners are actively looking for communities, and the significance of crossing the ecological inflection point may be even greater."
Taking the financial industry as an example, up to now, openEuler has covered six large state-owned banks and 12 joint-stock banks such as China Merchants, Everbright, Huaxia, and Minsheng, as well as 134 city commercial banks such as Bank of Beijing and Bank of Tianjin. "From the original general business to the current core business, and began to develop from a small number of applications to large-scale applications," Jiang Dayong revealed.
Zhou Zhengang also said that in the financial sector, many banks and other Financial Institution Groups have a soft spot for openEuler because of their demand for data reliability and large-scale computing parallelism. In 2023, openEuler will account for more than 50% of the server operating system market in China’s financial industry. In the government sector, such as government cloud, smart cities, including government-built intelligent computing centers, openEuler has been widely used, accounting for more than 70%. In addition, openEuler’s share in the telecommunications sector has also exceeded 70% this year, and its share in the energy and power industries has exceeded 40%.
"Euler has grown from a seed into a towering tree, shouldering the important task of building the root technology and digital economy technology base in our country’s information field." Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that currently, Euler has been commercialized on a large scale in the fields of communications, finance, electricity, transportation, informatization and other fields, creating significant economic and social benefits. "Looking to the future, we are full of confidence in Euler’s prospects."
Breaking Boundaries and Continuously Leading Intelligent Innovation
A multi-robot collaborative solution composed of a robotic arm that precisely controls the brush, an intelligent inspection robot applied to the power system, a drone, and a robot dog… In the more than 2,000 square meters exhibition area set up at the Operating System Conference 2023, reporters saw hundreds of exhibition points. A number of developers wearing openEuler white work clothes enthusiastically introduced innovative solutions based on Euler, in sharp contrast to the severe cold in the early days after the snow in the outdoor capital.
According to the introduction, adhering to the principle of "co-construction, sharing and co-governance", the openEuler community has attracted more than 1,300 leading enterprises, research institutions and universities to join since it was open-sourced, gathered more than 16,800 open-source contributors, and established more than 100 Special Interest Groups (SIGs). In the eyes of the industry, the openEuler open-source community has become the most dynamic and innovative open-source community in China.
In fact, continuous innovation rooted in technology and breaking boundaries have become important labels for Euler. According to Jiang Dayong, in the server field, the phenomenon of "soft chimneys" was more prominent in the past. A chip architecture corresponded to a set of operating systems, and application developers had to adapt to each "soft chimney", which did not add value to end users. However, Euler creatively proposed a set of code and architecture to support diverse computing power and full scenarios. "openEuler is an operating system that meets technological trends and customer needs, and its positioning is an open-source operating system for digital infrastructure."
"The application boundary of openEuler is the server industry, but today we see more scenarios such as cloud computing, edge computing, IOT, embedded, etc., breaking the barriers of the operating system and laying the foundation for the intelligent interconnection of all things." Lu Shouqun, chairperson of the China Open Source Software Promotion Alliance, believes so.
At present, Euler has supported all mainstream general computing architectures such as ARM, x86, and RISC-V. In the era of intelligence, Euler has also taken the lead in supporting mainstream AI processors such as NVIDIA and RISC, becoming the first choice for enabling diverse computing power. In addition to continuously enhancing the layout in key scenarios such as server, cloud, edge, and embedded, Euler is also promoting native development based on openEuler to realize that it can support multi-architecture, multi-version, and visual orchestration and construction on the infrastructure. Through FangTian, high-performance Windows, and other projects, it can achieve interoperability with the Hongmeng ecosystem in more scenarios, further expand the boundaries of collaboration between Euler and Hongmeng, and gradually build a computing power base in the intelligent era.
Since the beginning of this year, technological innovation represented by large models and large computing power has continued to promote the development of artificial intelligence, and AI has accelerated its entry into industrial production systems, changing the industrial landscape of thousands of industries. At present, Euler has been deeply integrated with AI. On the one hand, it uses the ChatGLM basic model to train Euler Copilot based on a large number of Euler operating system codes and data, and initially realizes functions such as code-assisted generation, problem intelligence analysis, and system-assisted operation and maintenance, making Euler more intelligent. On the other hand, Euler unifies the management and scheduling of heterogeneous resources, coordinates memory and computing power, realizes the deep integration of CPU and NPU, fully exploits idle resources, improves effective utilization, and then improves AI training and reasoning performance, making AI more efficient.
"The basic software represented by the operating system is the key to connecting the underlying computing power and upper-level applications, and is the soul of digital infrastructure." Peng Song, senior vice president and president of ICT strategy and marketing of Huawei, said in his speech at the conference that Huawei will continue to focus on root technology investment, enhance the innovation and competitiveness of basic software, support the construction of digital infrastructure and the prosperity of application software ecology; embrace intelligence, promote the integration of operating systems and AI, and stimulate basic software innovation; promote the combination of production, education and research, cultivate basic software and ICT industry talents, and provide a steady stream of impetus for technological innovation.
Facing the future, contributing Chinese wisdom to open source for the world
"The rapid development of openEuler proves that making full use of open source, participating in open source, supporting open source, and giving back to open source is an effective path to achieve operating system technology innovation and industrial prosperity," said Sun Wenlong, chairperson of the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation.
"I think there is one and only one definition of the success of openEuler, and that is the success of internationalization." Xiong Wei, vice chairperson of the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation TOC (Technical Review Committee) and executive director of the openEuler Committee, believes. He also said that some opportunities for internationalization can be seen at present. In the past year or two, CentOS has been shut down and other events, which not only affect domestic but also overseas. Overseas markets are also looking for new optional platforms. Some overseas customers are already consulting, and even some customers are verifying.
In fact, Euler has been committed to building an international open-source assistance platform. In terms of technology ecology, it has cooperated deeply with international mainstream foundations and has supported 98% of the world’s mainstream open-source software. In cloud native, big data, storage, database, HPC and dozens of other open-source communities, Euler has achieved upstream native support, ready to use out of the box. Euler is also deeply involved in the formulation and promotion of global mainstream software supply chain security standards and specifications such as OpenChain and OpenSSF. It took the lead in passing the OpenChain ISO 5230 open-source software protocol certification, and the community infrastructure has reached the OpenSSF SLSA L3 standard. In addition, Euler also cooperates with mainstream communities and organizations around the world to meet the localization requirements of various regions around the world and standardize the international governance of Euler’s open-source community. At present, the openEuler community has conducted in-depth cooperation with nine leading overseas open-source foundations, providing services to more than 150 countries and regions, building a new global open-source ecosystem, and pioneering a new open-source model in China.
As early as 2021, Intel joined the openEuler community, actively contributing to the ecological adaptation and technical optimization of the x86 platform, introducing the multi-generation platform Ice Lake, SPR, Emerald Rapids of x86 to openEuler, and integrating the AI computing acceleration framework into openEuler. At the openEuler Summit 2023 held on December 16, Intel announced that it has officially become a gold donor of the openEuler community, working with the industry to build an operating system ecosystem base to provide better resources and support for developers around the world. "In the future, Intel will continue to integrate upstream open source projects into openEuler, and work with openEuler to continue to make efforts in AI, enabling AI computing power from soft and hard collaboration to meet the needs of various industries for AI intelligent computing technology." Yang Jiguo, director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center, said.
Not only Intel, but since the Open Atomic Open Source Foundation announced the upgrade of openEuler to a project group in December 2022, leading companies and developer projects in various fields have begun to join. In the first half of this year, 9 projects completed the signing of donation intentions. At this conference, 13 projects from 8 companies including China Mobile Cloud Competence Center, Unicom Digital Technology Co., Ltd., WeBank, Beijing Dongtong Technology joint stock company, Shenxin Technology joint stock company, JD.com Technology Information Technology Co., Ltd. signed donation intentions with the openEuler project group. Industry insiders believe that donation projects from different industries and fields have injected new innovative power into Euler, which will further enhance the community’s technological innovation capabilities and promote community ecological prosperity.
"Euler’s experience fully proves that as long as Chinese developers work together, they have the ability to create a world-class open-source community," said Academician Ni Guangnan, calling on the industry to work together to promote open-source Euler to become the first open-source community with world influence led by the Chinese industry.