Rebirth 1990: The beginning is sweet and cool Bai Yueguang

He stressed the need to continue to work hard on personnel training and terminal network coverage: "Industry changes take time to settle. What we need to do is to consolidate the infrastructure and wait for the market to mature."

This strategic determination is the key to SF Express's steady progress in the red ocean of logistics.

The sunlight shone obliquely on the mottled wall, and Zhou Qi stood in front of the sawmill yard and stared for a long time.

This place, which witnessed the start of his career, has now become a logistics hub and fruit distribution center.

Financial Director Cao Qinquan lives here with a team of more than 30 people. The piles of bills and flashing computer screens on the desks indicate that this place is about to undergo a new transformation.

"Mr. Zhou!" Xiao Zhang, the new cashier, suddenly stood up straight, holding a half-finished voucher in his hand.

The sounds of keyboards that had been coming one after another suddenly stopped, and more than thirty pairs of eyes turned towards the door.

Several senior accountants adjusted their reading glasses and tried to stand up awkwardly - the abacus in front of them formed a subtle contrast with the computer keyboards.

Zhou Qi raised his hand to signal everyone to continue working, and his eyes swept across the crowded cubicles.

A group photo taken in the early days of the business is pasted on the glass partition. The empty factory in the photo forms a sharp contrast with the fleet of transport vehicles shuttling back and forth in front of them.

The finance office was filled with the mixed smell of ink and coffee. Three shared printers were spitting out papers one after another. The account books waiting to be filed were piled up in the corner, almost touching the ceiling.

“How is the system migration progress?”

Zhou Qi turned to Cao Qinquan who had rushed over after hearing the news.

This veteran financial officer was currently holding three laptops, with foam particles from the newly unpacked devices still stained on his shirt cuffs.

"The new interns picked up the skills very quickly, they are Master Wang and his team."

Following his gaze, he saw several older accountants scratching their heads at Excel spreadsheets, with handwritten notes covering the entire desk.

While walking through the corridor, Zhou Qi stopped to watch the loading and unloading area.

The brand new cold chain truck is being loaded with seasonal lychees. The "beeping" sound of the smart barcode scanning gun resonates wonderfully with the creaking sound of the iron door of the old factory.

The ivy on the exterior wall of the office building has spread to the second floor, swaying gently in the early summer breeze, as if reminding the owner that this place is about to complete its historical mission.

Zhou Qi did not stop when passing by the general manager's office.

The "Temporary Command Center" note on the frosted glass door was slightly curled, and a sand table model of the new headquarters building was displayed inside the door.

Those transparent glass curtain wall renderings form a gaze that transcends time and space with the mottled red brick wall outside the window.

Everyone looked up when they heard the sound.

The staff in the Finance Department who were originally concentrating on their work stood up at the same time. Even Cao Qinquan in the corner put down his pen and stood up.

Amid the constant greetings of "Mr. Zhou", Zhou Qi waved his hand and said, "Don't delay the work."

When everyone was seated, Cao Qinquan came hurriedly towards them with documents in his arms.

“Is the system running smoothly?”

Zhou Qi glanced at the brand new digital office area.

The financial director pushed up his glasses and said, "The adaptation period was shorter than expected. Now the whole team is cramming computer courses."

In the morning light reflected by the glass curtain wall, the rhythmic sound of young people typing on the keyboard is crisp and pleasant.

Zhou Qi took the electronic report and swiped his finger across the touch screen: "Traditional manual account books are like abacus. Sooner or later, they will be put in a museum."

These words were not only spoken to the old partner in front of him, but also made the entire finance department prick up their ears.

The income and expenditure curve of the latest quarter jumps on the screen, and every piece of data can be traced back to the original voucher - Cao Qinquan, who couldn't even do spreadsheets at the beginning, can now skillfully access the cloud database.

While walking through the corridor filled with green plants, Cao Qinquan reported the cash flow of each subsidiary in detail.

Even after sitting down in the president's office, Zhou Qi was still amazed at the amazing transformation of his childhood friend.

The village accountant who used to check accounts with an abacus can now recite the cross-border exchange rate conversion formula.

"Hualong and Inspur's quarterly reports are still on the way."

Cao Qinquan checked his to-do list: "It takes too much time to send paper bills through the post office."

These words hit Zhou Qi's pain point. He remembered the collaborative office system prototype that Lei Jun demonstrated last week. The encryption program installed in Lenovo's new model might be able to solve this problem.

Just as he was about to ask about the needs, Cao Qinquan suddenly lowered his voice and asked: "Do you remember the instant messaging tool we saw when we went to Shenzhen for an inspection two years ago?"

Seeing Zhou Qi raise his eyebrows, he quickly pulled up a screenshot on his tablet: "This software called MSN, if it can be modified and upgraded..."

The cicadas in the sycamore tree outside the office suddenly started chirping loudly.

Zhou Qi stroked the gilded pattern on the custom-made pen and suddenly realized: this financial director whom he had personally trained has begun to give back to the group with Internet thinking.

In the conference room of the science and technology park, the projector casts a light blue halo on the wall.

Cao Qinquan slid the mouse to show the interface to everyone: "This is a new cross-platform communication tool developed in North America. It uses the TCP/IP protocol to achieve real-time text interaction."

He deliberately slowed down his speech and looked at the host: "To put it simply, it can transmit information instantly like sending a telegram."

Zhou Qi tapped the table with his knuckles and chuckled.

As one of the first people in China to come into contact with the Internet, he was naturally familiar with the MSN system developed by Microsoft.

At this moment, the air conditioner in the conference room made a slight hum, which reminded him of the bulky desktop computers he saw in Zhongguancun in 1998.

When running this kind of overseas software back then, computers with 512MB of memory would freeze like a slide show.

“User habits vary greatly.”

Zhou Qi suddenly spoke, his fingertips drawing wavy lines on the touchpad: "The interface is all in English, the send button is hidden in the third-level menu, and the file transfer is limited to 3MB."

He looked up at Cao Qinquan, who was surprised. "Not to mention the office components that were bundled with the car. It's like putting a tractor engine on a car."

The city skyline outside the glass curtain wall glowed with metallic luster. Zhou Qi took out his mobile phone and dialed a number: "Lao Lei, can the existing architecture integrate the instant messaging module?"

As he spoke, he drew a rough outline of a dialog box on a piece of sticky paper: "Just basic text transmission, all other fancy features will be cut off."

There was a rustling sound of papers flipping through the receiver.

Lei Jun looked at the screen full of codes and smiled bitterly: "Mr. Zhou, this is like adding a jet engine to a bicycle."

As the project lead, he is well aware of the technical barriers that synchronous communication must overcome: "Multi-threaded processing alone requires rewriting the underlying architecture, not to mention data encryption and server diversion."

Zhou Qi twirled his pen and poked a small hole in the minutes: "Remember the time-sharing system we saw in Silicon Valley?"

He suddenly raised his voice: "Make the message queue a drip cache, and each transmission does not exceed 200 bytes, just like."

“Like ants moving!”

Lei Jun slammed the table, causing ripples to appear on the coffee cup next to the monitor.

This metaphor made him suddenly realize that traditional instant messaging was obsessed with "container transportation", but they could completely reconstruct the protocol using the idea of ​​"package sorting".

Zhou Qi naturally knew what the other party was concerned about.

Technical challenges do exist.