Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started

Customer Stories Conclusion

Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

An Introduction to

Powering Your Journey to the Cloud,

Today and Tomorrow

www.alibabacloud.com September 2021

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Mission and Background 04

CONTENTS
Supporting Business Transformation 08
• Asia Accelerator: Accelerating Success 09
in Asia and China

• Digital Transformation Expert 11

• Alibaba Group Ecosystem 14

• Enabling Growth 15

A Leader in Technology 18
• Alibaba Cloud Timeline 18

• Environmental Innovation 19

• Global Recognition 21

Products and Solutions 23

Getting Started with Alibaba Cloud 31

Customer Stories 33

Conclusion 55

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FOREWORD
Thank you for choosing Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology
and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group and the number
one cloud provider for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in
the Asia Pacific region.

This whitepaper outlines the company’s mission and

provides a snapshot of its journey so far. It explores
how Alibaba Cloud has evolved and demonstrated its
commitment to grow its worldwide presence by enhancing
its global infrastructure and network. It also focuses on how
Alibaba Cloud has emerged as a leading cloud provider in
the Asia Pacific region by facilitating digital transformation
for businesses, big and small, across various industries.

In addition, this whitepaper also describes how Alibaba

Cloud supports business growth through partnerships
and alliances. It introduces Alibaba Cloud’s key products
and services, and guides you on how to get started on the
platform, find additional support, and gain professional
certification and accreditation.

Moreover, it also sheds light on what makes Alibaba

Cloud stand out in the marketplace — be it powering
major shopping festivals, facilitating innovative payment
methods, or offering industry-tailored solutions. Discover
how Alibaba Cloud is setting new benchmarks, together
with large multinational corporations (MNCs) and small
and medium enterprises (SMEs), through innovation and its
comprehensive suite of cloud services.

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MISSION AND
BACKGROUND
Alibaba Cloud: Alibaba Group’s Technological
Backbone

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud is a global leader in cloud

computing and artificial intelligence. It is the technological
backbone of the Alibaba Group, which aims to make it easy
to do business anywhere. As one of the significant business
units of the group, Alibaba Cloud provides the best-in-class
cloud computing infrastructure and cloud services for global
enterprises across industries to operate more efficiently,
effectively, and securely. Alibaba Cloud also supports Alibaba
Group’s groundbreaking Double 11 Global Shopping Festival,
which generated USD 74.1 billion (RMB 498.2 billion) in gross
merchandise value (GMV) in 2020 with zero downtime.

Headquartered in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba Group provides

vital technology infrastructure and marketing capabilities
to help businesses grow their products and services online.
Alibaba Group encompasses commerce, cloud computing,
digital media, and innovation. In addition to Alibaba Cloud, USD 74.1 B
the cloud computing division of the Group, other business
The amount processed in
units include AliExpress, the global consumer marketplace,
sales during the
and Alipay, the mobile and online payment platform. In
2017, Alibaba established the DAMO Academy (Academy for
Double 11 Shopping
Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook), dedicated Festival 2020.
to scientific and technological research and innovation. Over
the last three years, Alibaba has invested billions of dollars
in research and development and has built research labs in
seven cities worldwide, looking into topics, including data
intelligence, FinTech, quantum computing, IoT, and human-
machine interaction.

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Alibaba Cloud: Mission

Alibaba Cloud aims to support thousands of enterprises,

government organizations, and developers in more than
200 countries and regions in their business transformation
journey by providing innovative, reliable, and secure cloud
computing and data processing solutions.

Alibaba Cloud Mission, Vision, and Cultural Propositions

Technology powers innovation,

creates value, and brings
brighter future.
In the next ten years, the greatest certainty is the
popularization of digital technology, and the whole social
economy and life itself will be fully digitalized. Today,
“everything can be on the cloud”. The cloud is becoming a
carrier of this era and a symbol of digital development.

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To achieve its mission, Alibaba Cloud has built an

international network of 78 availability zones in 24 regions
serving millions of customers. Its world-class infrastructure
and expanding global presence have helped establish
78
Availability Zones
partnerships and attract over 3 million customers across
200+ countries and regions. In 2020, it supported 38% of the
Fortune 500 companies.
24
Regions
Alibaba Cloud has been recognized globally for its stellar
work. According to Gartner’s Market Share: IT Services,
Worldwide 2020 report, Alibaba Cloud ranks third in the
global IaaS market and first in the Asia Pacific region for the
3M+
third consecutive year. The report also recognizes Alibaba
Customers

Cloud’s increased efforts across various sectors, including

education, retail, banking and securities, and utilities. In
2020, Alibaba Cloud was also named the Leader in Gartner’s
200+
Countries
prestigious Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management
Systems. Alibaba Cloud was acclaimed as a Leader in the
Forrester Wave’s Function-As-A-Service Platforms Q1 2021
report.

No.1 IaaS + PaaS Provider in China Asia IaaS Market Share,

2021 Q1 2020

Alibaba
Alibaba Cloud
Cloud

Source: IDC China Public Cloud Service Source: Gartner Market Share:
Tracker, 2021 Q1 IT Services, 2020

Alibaba Cloud’s Market Share in China and APAC Region

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Alibaba Cloud offers cost-effective solutions to enterprises

and SMEs to help meet their cloud computing, storage,
networking, and security needs and provides them with
an easy way to integrate with other Alibaba products and
services. Alibaba Cloud’s teams stationed in Singapore,
Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Silicon Valley, Paris,
Jakarta, Seoul, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, and
Tokyo support its global operations and drive international
growth.

“ We are committed
to bettering the
Asia Pacific region’s
cloud ecosystem
and enhancing
its digital “
infrastructure.
Jeff Zhang,
President of Alibaba Cloud
Intelligence at Alibaba Cloud
Summit on June 8, 2021

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SUPPORTING
BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION
Driven by its mission, Alibaba Cloud employs artificial
intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics
to boost digital transformation and power innovations
across industries, including retail, education, finance, and
manufacturing. It strives to support businesses and society
in solving complex problems by bringing data together
with intelligent tech and help companies to become more
efficient.

Alibaba Cloud facilitates international expansion,

particularly in the Asian market. Alibaba Cloud supports
startups and SMEs to grow and expand beyond boundaries
in Asia’s complex and dynamic market with a particular
focus on the China market.

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Asia Accelerator: Accelerating Success in

Asia and China

International expansion is crucial to becoming a global

business. The Asian market presents a massive business
Southeast Asia’s Internet
opportunity, with the Southeast Asia region and China economy will reach

USD 300 B
becoming an increasingly hot destination for multinational
corporations and SMEs alike. According to the e-Conomy
SEA 2020 report from Google, Temasek, and Bain & by 2025
Source: e-Conomy SEA
Company, the scale of Southeast Asia’s Internet economy
2020 Report
is projected to reach USD 300 billion by 2025. Furthermore,
China’s market continues to grow even during the
pandemic. According to Statista, about 782.41 million
people in China shopped online in 2020. As the economy
recovers, businesses will begin to improve worldwide, and
782.41 M
people in China shopped
the economic revival will start in Asia.
online in 2020
Source: Statista
Establishing a presence in Asia, particularly in China, could
be a critical aspect of any company’s global strategy. Alibaba
Cloud, currently Asia’s No. 1 public cloud service provider,
surely knows what it takes to succeed in Asia.

Alibaba Cloud’s Asia Accelerator helps large enterprises

accelerate digitalization, enables SMEs to boost growth,
and provides developers easy access to the latest cloud
computing technology without hassles.

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Your First Choice in Asia Pacific

Widespread Advanced Strong Dedicated Local

Coverage Technology Ecosystem Support

• Biggest IaaS market • Rated as LEADER • Connect to 20+ • 10+ local teams
share in Asia Pacific in Gartner Magic diverse Alibaba in most countries
Quadrant 2020 for business ecosystem in Asia to provide
• Most data centers
Cloud Database in China professional services
and CDN nodes in
Management System
Asia Pacific • 10,000+ global • Local Delivery
• No.1 WAF in Greater partners and more Support available
• Received 80+
China by Gartner than 500 joint in SGP, HKG, MAC,
security and
solutions catering to MYS, IND
compliance • Function Compute
industries
accreditations enters the Forrester • 1-on-1 Consulting
worldwide Leader Quadrant • Alipay and JV Service
for the first time in e-wallet users
March 2021 exceeds 1 Billion

The Asia Accelerator Advantage

China Gateway: Boost Growth in China

with Alibaba Cloud

Alibaba Cloud helps international businesses of with seamless access to China through Alibaba
all sizes and at different levels of commitment Cloud’s China Gateway solution. Alibaba Cloud
to adapt their operations for China. Whether China Gateway covers everything from website
companies are launching a lean operation with hosting, online payments, and offline logistics
no local office, partially committing with a few to ICP registration. For more information about
local staff, or launching complete operations, Alibaba Cloud’s ICP Filing Consulting Service,
going all in, Alibaba Cloud will be the best kindly refer to the ICP Support page.
partner. In Mainland China, Alibaba Cloud is
the leading public cloud services provider with
one of the most advanced cloud networks in
the region. It provides international companies

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Digital Transformation Expert

Alibaba Cloud is supporting digitization in every industry,

helping major businesses in retail, finance, education,
healthcare, and life sciences evolve.

New Retail

No.3
The retail industry is witnessing a drastic digital
transformation. Growing demand for omnichannel
customer experience, increasing digitization, and big
in the retail sector in the
data analytics, among other key factors, are reshaping global IaaS market in
the industry. As one of the world’s biggest retail 2020
commerce companies, Alibaba is redefining business by
Source: Gartner
merging the best of online and brick-and-mortar retail
to build an evolved model for new retail to ensure an
omnichannel consumer experience.

Alibaba Cloud, a pioneer in cloud, big data, and AI

technologies, is helping global retailers revolutionize
traditional retail by enabling digital transformation to
fuel growth and help businesses adapt to the digital age.
Alibaba Cloud’s retail solutions offer online and offline
integration to provide a seamless omnichannel shopping
experience, personalized customer journey, and
optimized business operations with data-driven strategic
decision-making, inventory management, and marketing
to create more value.

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Financial Services

Innovation, speed, and security are vital in the financial

services industry to empower businesses to deliver a
seamless customer experience and achieve operational

No.3
efficiency. Alibaba Cloud helps financial institutions build
next-generation architecture, boost capabilities, accelerate
innovation, optimize costs, and become more agile by
in the banking and
providing customized solutions across various scenarios,
securities sector in the
global IaaS market in 2020 such as payments, insurance, securities, and investing.
Alibaba Cloud’s FinTech solutions facilitate digital
Source: Gartner
transformation across financial institutions, from multi-
finance groups to FinTech organizations.

With highly available and cost-effective cloud services and

tailored solutions, Alibaba Cloud is the one-stop solution
for FinTech companies to operate more efficiently. Global
FinTech companies rely on Alibaba Cloud to run workloads
on the cloud and ensure higher scalability, lower latency,
and security for delivering greater customer satisfaction.
Alibaba Cloud also provides the required compliance
and security for Forex companies to operate effectively
worldwide.

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Media and Entertainment

The media industry is undergoing drastic changes, and the

media companies are facing mounting pressure to thrive.
The accelerated digitalization in the media industry is
driven by changing the industrial landscape and consumer
expectations. Accessing content from anywhere at any
time is the need of the hour. Media companies are turning
to new digital platforms and seeking innovative technology
solutions to improve content management, distribution,
and delivery for today’s market.

Alibaba Cloud’s one-stop media solution empowers

media companies with a range of powerful multimedia
services to digitize their entire media journey. With Alibaba
Cloud Media Solutions, companies can streamline all
the key processes, including video production, media
storage, video processing, video distribution, and content
management. The solution helps build customizable
platforms and applications online and produce, edit,
transcode, store, and tag media content in a fast, secure,
and intelligent way. It also ensures the content reaches
worldwide audiences without compromising quality
and latency. Alibaba Cloud Media Solutions also help
media organizations manage and deliver a superior and
personalized user experience by analyzing operational and
audience insights using the dedicated media services.

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Alibaba Group Ecosystem

Business units throughout Alibaba Group work to make it

easier to do business anywhere, whether through logistics,
payments, or international trade, particularly helping
companies gain a foothold in Mainland China. Alibaba Cloud
provides the vital technology infrastructure that powers the
group’s products and services. Alibaba Cloud also allows its
customers to do more and discover new opportunities by
leveraging the comprehensive ecosystem to see how they
work together to power business in China and beyond.

ECOSYSTEM
PARTICIPANTS
Weibo
Location-Based
Social Media
Professional
Service Provider
MARKET PLACES Mobile Browser

Marketing
Digital
Entertainment

Financing &
Payment Solution Logistics

Online and Mobile Commerce Platform

Data Technology Cloud Computing Data Technology

Alibaba Group Ecosystem

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Enabling Growth

Alibaba Cloud has a key focus on helping small and medium-

sized enterprises grow and expand beyond borders.

Alibaba Cloud Galaxy+ Program (AGP)

The Alibaba Cloud Galaxy+ Program helps SMEs build their

businesses on the cloud quickly and easily. The program
offers extensive support to eligible IT and Internet enterprises
to accelerate growth via a comprehensive portfolio of
products, exclusive pricing plans, personalized consultation,
free training, go-to-market support, and 24/7 support.

SMEs can leverage several benefits of AGP, including:

• Product Benefits: Ensure cost-efficiency across the range of

cloud products and services by taking advantage of up to
50% discounts.

• Service Benefits: Achieve better results with free 1-on-1

pre-sale consulting from experts, 24/7 technical support,
and guidance on various processes, such as ICP filing.

• Training Benefits: Get extensive educational benefits with

free online training and certification courses.

• Go-to-Market Support: Accelerate go-to-market efforts to

scale, grow, and succeed in the global marketplace.

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Alibaba Cloud Starter Package

SMEs, startups, and individual developers are often

faced with financial constraints and limited access to
technical support while exploring to scale their businesses
and applications. They need timely relief to respond
rapidly to such challenges while speeding up their digital
transformation and becoming more agile and resilient.

Alibaba Cloud offers a Starter Package to help SMEs, startups,

and individual developers start small and consistently scale
their businesses. The Starter Package provides discounted
rates on various commonly used Alibaba Cloud services.
Individuals and small-and-medium enterprises can take
advantage of the upgraded Starter Package program
to embark on their cloud journey with Alibaba Cloud’s
featured virtual servers and managed databases at low and
predictable prices. It is ideal for supporting various simple
workloads through quick deployments in a few simple steps.

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Alibaba Cloud Partner Network (ACPN)

Alibaba Cloud aims to provide certified partners an

exceptional journey and help them reach significant
milestones by providing valuable and up-to-date support
through Alibaba Cloud Partner Network (ACPN) programs.
ACPN aims to offer a one-stop solution to partners via a
comprehensive training portal that ensures enablement
benefits and marketing and sales support for maximizing
opportunities. ACPN ensures customer value is identified and
achieved by all types of Alibaba Cloud partners.

Channel Partners

Alibaba Cloud Channel Partner

Program allows partners to
Technology Partners
sell Alibaba Cloud products to
customers as standalone products
or incorporate Alibaba Cloud The Technology Partner Program
products into their offerings and offers a secure, convenient, and
sell to the customers. low-cost option to independent
software vendors (ISVs) to reach
customers worldwide. Partners get
a platform via marketing events
and the Alibaba Cloud marketplace
to promote their products and
Managed Service Partners reach Alibaba Cloud customers.

Alibaba Cloud International MSP

Partner Program allows MSPs
authorized by Alibaba Cloud to
provide independent consulting for Hybrid Cloud (ZStack) Partners
planning, designing, integrating,
and delivering managed services. Alibaba Cloud ZStack is a hybrid
cloud product launched by ZStack
and Alibaba Cloud. This partner
program targets recruiting capable
partners to provide ZStack plan,
design, and resale services to
customers.

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A LEADER IN
TECHNOLOGY Alibaba Cloud Timeline

Alibaba Cloud becomes the first

2009 company in the world to provide 5K
Alibaba Cloud cloud computing capabilities.
is founded.

2013 Alibaba Cloud

provides services
overseas, becoming
the first Chinese
Alibaba Cloud launches
company to provide
the “Lean Application, Big
2014 cloud computing
Middleware” strategy.
services worldwide.

2015

• Alibaba Cloud becomes the official cloud

services partner of the Olympics.
• Alibaba DAMO Academy is established for
2017
fundamental scientific research and innovation.

2018

Alibaba Cloud and Olympic 2019

Broadcasting Services launch
OBS Cloud. All of the Alibaba Group’s
core e-commerce systems
run on Alibaba Cloud.

2020

Alibaba Cloud ranks 1st among cloud

service providers in the Asia Pacific and
3rd in the world (as per Gartner) for the
third consecutive year.

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The cloud market is growing rapidly as more companies

unlock the benefits of reliable, flexible, secure, and constant
24/7 services that power up businesses to scale and grow.
Market research giant, Gartner, predicts that the worldwide
end-user spending on public cloud services will grow by
23.1% in 2021 to $332.3 billion, up from $270 billion in 2020.

Alibaba Cloud is now one of the global leaders in cloud

computing, and according to Gartner’s latest report, its
market share in the global IaaS market climbed to 9.5%
in 2020, up from 8.8% in 2019. It offers a comprehensive
suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, and
various prestigious organizations recognize its cutting-
edge technology products and solutions. For instance,
Alibaba Cloud’s Hybrid Cloud Solutions provide customers
with state-of-the-art connectivity solutions with enhanced
security that bring together the benefits of both public and
private cloud models. Similarly, Alibaba’s Apsara Cloud
operating system is receiving recognition for its path-
breaking advances.

Environmental Innovation

Alibaba Cloud’s commitment to innovation extends

beyond its products and services, all the way to driving
environmental sustainability by innovating in the highest
impact areas of business and improving infrastructure.
All the environmental sustainability initiatives are
fundamentally connected to its core business practices
and help inform the long-term strategies to make sure its
systems adapt to the future.

One of the highly visible environmental effects of

technology companies is the power consumption of their
hardware infrastructure. Alibaba Cloud employs energy-
efficient technology and methods in data centers, with a
focus on minimizing energy consumption. The cloud pioneer

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has invested in energy-efficient data centers and servers to reduce

its carbon footprint and conserve energy.

Building eco-friendly data centers are part of Alibaba Cloud’s

approach to environmental conservation and sustainable
operations. Alibaba Cloud has 5 Green Data Centers across China,
which is the world’s only liquid cooling cluster deployed on such a
large scale.

Compared to traditional data centers, Alibaba Cloud Hangzhou

data center saves 70 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each
year. Furthermore, the water-cooling technology at East China
Data Center ensures free cooling for 90% of its operating time,
driving down energy consumption by more than 80% compared
to mechanical cooling. This unique “soaking server” cooling
technology saves more than 70% of energy and reduces the
average annual PUE to 1.09, which is among the lowest in the
world.

Zhou Ming, Vice President

of Alibaba Group and
Head of Alibaba Cloud’s
Infrastructures at the Launch
of 5 Green Data Centers

In addition to these Green Data Centers, DingTalk, Alibaba Group’s

enterprise communication and collaboration platform, has saved
11.23 million tons of carbon emissions as of December 31, 2020
through its “paperless office” initiative.

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Global Recognition

Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive compliance program

encompasses a range of certifications and worldwide
attestation reports and is committed to data security and
protection. Alibaba Cloud was the first cloud services
provider to receive the CSA STAR Certification for security,
trust, and assurance and the first to receive the ISO27001
Information Security Management System Certification
in China. Alibaba Cloud adheres to all international and
respective domestic information security standards. It is
committed to using best practices to protect customers’
personal information and comply with applicable laws of
countries where it operates. Besides, it adheres to industry-
standard practices and has obtained all the relevant industry
certifications, such as GxP, TISAX, HIPAA, and MPAA.

Alibaba Cloud Security and Privacy Compliance at a Glance

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These accolades have helped Alibaba Cloud to become

recognized by renowned research organizations. Some of the
recent accomplishments include:

Leader Niche
in Gartner’s Magic Player
Quadrant for Leader in the Gartner 2021
Cloud Database in the Forrester Magic Quadrant
Management Wave’s Function- for Application
Systems, As-A-Service Performance
Worldwide in 2020. Platforms, Q1 2021 Monitoring.
report.

Strong
Niche Visionary
Performer
in the Gartner 2021
in the Forrester Player
Magic Quadrant for
Wave’s Cloud Data in the Gartner 2021
Cloud AI Developer
Warehouse, Q1 Magic Quadrant for
Services report.
2021 report. Data Science and
Machine Learning
Platforms report.

View Complete List of Accolades

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PRODUCTS AND
SOLUTIONS
Irrespective of business size and type, the cloud is becoming
the default requirement to expand businesses worldwide
quickly and easily. Alibaba Cloud’s wide range of products,
services, and industry-tailored solutions help companies
reduce delivery cycles, bring operational efficiency, go to
market faster, add new revenue streams, and cut down the
total cost of ownership. Let’s explore how Alibaba Cloud
offerings help MNCs and SMEs inject organizational agility,
enable innovation, and scale up or down seamlessly to meet
business requirements.

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Alibaba Cloud Products Portfolio

Alibaba Cloud Solutions Portfolio

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Computing

Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) is an online

computing service, that provides elastic and secure virtual
cloud servers to cater to all the cloud hosting needs of
an enterprise. As businesses grow, they can expand
disk space and increase bandwidth or release resources
whenever required to increase efficiency. Alibaba Cloud
ECS comes with a world-leading Service Level Agreement
(SLA) commitment that guarantees 99.975% availability
for individual instances and 99.995% availability for cross-
zone multi-instance setups. The third-generation X-Dragon
architecture powers Alibaba Cloud computing services.
Compared with instances based on the previous-generation
X-Dragon architecture, the Alibaba Cloud instances
demonstrate a 160% overall performance gain and perform
at least 30% faster than any global counterparts to deliver
the best overall computing power.

Alibaba Cloud ECS guarantees

99.975% availability
for individual
instances and 99.995%
availability for multiple
instances.

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Function Compute is Alibaba Cloud’s most popular serverless

product, offering a fully hosted environment that eliminates
the need to manage infrastructure or other O&M operations
and enables developers to focus on writing and uploading
code. It handles resource management, autoscaling, and
load balancing to speed up development. Event sources
from other Alibaba Cloud services can also be set up to
automatically trigger code to run. Also, Function Compute
allows users to only pay for the resources that their code
consumes.

Simple Application Server is a single server-based service

that allows building, monitoring, and maintaining a website
with just a few clicks. It makes stand-alone application
building much more manageable by supporting all-in-
one services, including domain name resolution, website
publishing, application management, security, and O&M,
among others. It is the best way for beginners to get started
with cloud computing.

Databases

As the database management systems market increasingly

shifts to the cloud, Gartner predicts that 75% of all databases
will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform by 2022.
Today, businesses require database products that can
provide robust database engines with data backup, recovery,
monitoring, migration, disaster recovery, and enhanced
security. Alibaba Cloud offers an extensive portfolio of
cloud database solutions that have supported over 100,000
customers with more than 400,000 databases. According
to Gartner, Alibaba Cloud is the number one choice among
cloud database providers in the Asia Pacific market.

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Alibaba Cloud Named a

Leader in the 2020

Gartner Magic
Quadrant for Cloud
Database Management
Systems

Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB RDS supports all the mainstream

open-source and commercial database solutions, including
MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, and Redis.
ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL is a fully hosted online database
service that enhances availability and performance and
supports SQL versions 5.5, 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0. ApsaraDB
RDS for PostgreSQL is an on-demand PostgreSQL service
with automated monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery
capabilities. ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server is a cost-
effective cloud-hosted SQL Server service with automated
monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities.
ApsaraDB for MongoDB is a secure, reliable, and elastically
scalable MongoDB service. ApsaraDB for Redis is a fully
managed, performance-enhanced, and cost-effective Redis
database service.

Alibaba Cloud PolarDB is a cloud-native relational

database that provides businesses with mission-critical
database applications, the performance and availability
of traditional enterprise databases, and the flexibility and
cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. Besides, it’s
compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle. PolarDB
is six times faster than various standard MySQL databases
and is more efficient than traditional commercial databases
at 1/10 the cost. It is based on the proven database
technology and best practices that supported hyper-scale
events, such as the Alibaba Double 11 Global Shopping
Festival over the last decade.

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Networking

In today’s hyper-connected world, businesses need to

stay connected worldwide to ensure secure and reliable
communication anytime and anywhere.

Alibaba Cloud’s networking services allow MNCs to build

fast, stable, legal, and compliant cross-region network
connections. Alibaba Cloud’s extensive global node network
allows enterprises to access close-by nodes shortening
geographic distances and minimizing latency.

Alibaba Cloud Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) helps

enterprises overcome unstable networks, high latency,
and global connectivity challenges. Global companies can
keep their network stability worries at bay with CEN and

24 bid farewell to congestion, transmission interruption, or

packet loss. Multinationals with goals of building a cross-
Regions
region hybrid enterprise network without incurring CAPEX
can leverage CEN to build a global network by following

12 four easy steps in just five minutes. CEN allows customized

bandwidth configuration and lets enterprises only pay for the
Regions in
resources they utilize via the Pay-As-You-Go payment model.
Mainland China
Alibaba Cloud Global Accelerator (GA) is an application

110+ acceleration service that helps businesses optimize Internet-

facing services for global access through efficient bandwidth
Point of Presence usage and high service reliability. It reduces network
(POP) Nodes latency for the end-customers by directing traffic to nearby
acceleration nodes deployed worldwide and connecting

2,800+ directly to the reliable and congestion-free Alibaba Cloud’s

global network. Alibaba Cloud GA serves as a bridge between
CDN Nodes businesses and their overseas customers. It decreases
network latency, jitters, and packet loss while offering
maximum bandwidth.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 28

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Security

Choosing a secure and reliable cloud provider is vital for

businesses of all sizes. Alibaba Cloud is committed to the
highest levels of security and compliance and adheres to
domestic and international information security standards,
along with various industry requirements. It provides
compliance with PCI DSS for payments, HIPAA for healthcare,
GDPR for data protection and privacy, and more.

Alibaba Cloud’s cloud-based security service, Anti-DDoS,

integrates with ECS to safeguard data and applications from
DDoS attacks. Alibaba Cloud also integrates Web Application
Firewall (WAF), a cloud firewall service that protects against
web-based attacks, including SQL injections, malicious bots,
command execution vulnerabilities, and other common web
attacks. It protects users’ core website data and safeguards
the security and availability of any website. Moreover,
with Alibaba Cloud Security Center, companies can identify,
analyze, and notify users of security threats in real-time.
Enterprises leverage Security Center to reduce O&M costs for
security management by automating attack source tracing,
cloud security configuration monitoring, cloud asset risk
monitoring, and more.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 29

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Migration

Migration is a critical challenge for businesses, whether it’s

web hosting migration, image migration, database migration,
or storage migration. Alibaba Cloud’s migration solution
offers an array of services and resources that will ensure a
smooth migration.

Alibaba Cloud provides a complete end-to-end migration

solution and supports enterprises at every stage of the
migration process. Alibaba Cloud’s migration solution
encompasses devising a migration methodology to consider
all benefits and possible risks, forecasting future resource
usage through capacity evaluation planning, and establishing
a distributed cloud architecture design to ensure high service
availability.

Hybrid Cloud

Most enterprises are adopting the hybrid cloud model to

leverage public and private cloud benefits. Hybrid cloud
offers the elasticity, scalability, agility, and cost optimization
of public cloud; and the data security and compliance of
Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud
private cloud.
ensures extreme elasticity with

over 50 full-stack Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud helps enterprises evolve

product portfolios seamlessly to a hybrid cloud across various business

scenarios. To ensure business continuity in a hybrid
and over 10,000 environment and accelerate digital transformation, Alibaba

servers in a single region. Cloud Hybrid Cloud uses the Alibaba Cloud Apsara Stack
and Alibaba Cloud ZStack to provide solutions across the
full-stack IT infrastructure. Alibaba Cloud Hybrid Cloud
ensures interoperability, reliability, and ease of management
by providing capabilities such as elastic scaling, disaster
recovery, data backup, centralized troubleshooting
management, and DevOps functionalities.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 30

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

GETTING STARTED
WITH ALIBABA CLOUD
Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive resource center to
help users quickly access and leverage information to make
the most of Alibaba Cloud’s products and services. Different
types of resources help prospective users get started with the
Alibaba Cloud platform, explore various products, and learn
and upgrade skills.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 31

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Free Trial

New users on the Alibaba Cloud platform can get hands-on

experience with a free trial for a wide selection of products.
Enterprises can benefit from exclusive membership benefits
to enjoy higher configurations and an extended free trial
period for selected products. Users may refer to tutorials and
quick start guides on signing up to Alibaba Cloud and explore
our products and services free of cost.

Blogs and Webinars

Find out the latest cloud insights, product innovations,

industry updates, and developer trends on the Alibaba Cloud
blog channel and watch on-demand and live webinars to
learn from the experts about the latest in cloud technology
and Alibaba Cloud’s product and service offerings.

Whitepapers and Ebooks

Expand your knowledge and understanding of the cloud and

related technologies with detailed information and research-
based insights. Access the latest whitepapers and ebooks to
deep-dive with information about computing, networking,
database, storage, security, enterprise applications, analytics,
AI, and more.

APIs & SDKs

Alibaba Cloud provides a range of developer resources,

including Software Development Kits (SDKs) and APIs,
allowing developers to gain access to Alibaba Cloud services
and manage applications. Alibaba Cloud API Gateway
provides developers with a complete API hosting service to
release their APIs on Alibaba Cloud products.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 32

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

CUSTOMER STORIES
EL CORTE INGLÉS
“By leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s expertise in retail digitalization
as well as by harnessing Alibaba Cloud’s robust solutions,
El Corte Ingles provides a more personalized customer
experience and pushes for innovation.”

FEATURED PRODUCTS About El Corte Inglés

Image Search
An intelligent image search service Headquartered in Madrid, El Corte Inglés is the largest
with product search and generic
search features to help users resolve department store group in Europe and ranks third worldwide.
image search requests. El Corte Inglés is the only department store in Spain. With

MaxCompute
nearly 80 years of experience, the group has more than
A general purpose, fully managed, 90,000 employees.
multi-tenancy data processing
platform for large-scale data
warehousing.
The Challenge
Machine Learning
An end-to-end platform that provides El Corte Inglés continually pursues innovation and state-
various machine learning algorithms
to meet your data mining and in-the-art technology with new initiatives, partnerships,
analysis requirements.
business models and services. The organization is committed

El Corte Inglés and Alibaba to developing new concept.

Cloud will continue working

hand in hand to drive To keep improving their customer experience, both offline

digitalization transformation and online, El Corte Ingles requires new tools of technology

and bring more-personalized in order to address multiple and diverse customer needs.

experiences to customers.
One of El Corte Inglés’ goals is to improve its customers’
ability to find the right product or the most suitable for
them. Therefore, it is currently refining three specific
search engines: precise search, personalized search and
customized discovery.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 33

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Precise Search: Some customers know exactly what product

they are after and are usually able to take a picture of it. The
classic search bar solution is only based on keywords and
therefore time consuming for those who do not know the
exact name of the product, how to describe the difference
between thousands of products or in case of foreign
shoppers, how to spell the keywords in Spanish.

Personalized Search: Different customers may use the same

keywords in the search bar. Currently the search engine
provides the same result list without considering customer
profiling and their preferences. A better solution would be
to take into account the customer profile in order to provide
personalized search results.

Customized Discovery: During exclusive sales periods such

as Black Friday, shoppers may not have a single product in
mind. They may spend time to discover different products,
read specifications and compare items without buying
anything. Customized guidance based on the customers’
needs would enhance their experience.

Why Alibaba Cloud

With 20 years of experience in e-commerce, Alibaba has

developed an extensive expertise to offer a customized
shopping experience to millions of users. Alibaba Cloud has
a broad portfolio of sophisticated data-driven technologies
used daily to support business innovation.

The consumer on Alibaba’s platform is able to find desired

products in seconds by just taking a screenshot or uploading
an image. They can also receive personalized feeds that
match their shopping preferences based on previous
purchases, ads or searched terms. For a single brand, Alibaba
is able to provide more than 40 million different landing
pages and journeys according to the shoppers’ profile and
preferences.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 34

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

By leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s expertise in retail digitalization

as well as by harnessing Alibaba Cloud’s robust solutions,
El Corte Ingles provides a more personalized customer
experience and pushes for innovation.

Solutions

Alibaba Cloud has materialized these technologies into

products and services like:
• Image Search for precise search experience
• Recommendation Engine for personalized search and
customized discovery experiences

Image Search Architecture: Image Search is an intelligent

image search service that aids users to find similar or
identical images. Based on machine learning and deep
learning, the product enables end-users to take a screenshot
or upload an image to search and find the desired outcomes
and fulfill other search requests. The architecture has three
tiers: Mobile app or Web page, E-commerce Web Server, and
Image Search Engine on Alibaba Cloud. The shoppers use
their mobile app to take a photo of a product and send it to
the E-commerce web server. Then the webserver application
calls the API or SDK to forward the photo to Image Search
Engine on Alibaba Cloud in Europe. The engine extracts the
visual features of the product in the photo and sends back a
list of product ID, which looks similar to the original product.
The web server will build and send back the search result
page to the Shopper mobile app.

Recommendation Engine Architecture: Recommendation

Engine is also a result of R&D on AI and machine learning of
Alibaba Cloud. The Engine manager could define different
scenarios and select the algorithm from the algorithm catalog
or user personalized algorithm, and then personalized the
parameters value. The AB test is also available to compare the
efficiency of the algorithm.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 35

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

The machine learning engine continues daily self-training

from three different types of data: customer profile, product
information, and historical customer behaviors. The
E-commerce web site continues to update the database for
the engine. The engine will produce the results according
to the defined scenarios and parameters. The results are
stored in the in-memory database. Once the scenario trigger
is activated, for example, a specific shopper opens the front
page of the jewelry category, the E-commerce application
will query the in-memory database to get and show an
appropriated list of recommended products to the shopper.

Looking Forward

El Corte Inglés and Alibaba Cloud will continue working hand

in hand to drive digitalization transformation and bring more-
personalized experiences to customers. El Corte Ingles is also
looking into leveraging the whole Alibaba Group ecosystem.
The initiatives under consideration include introducing
new sales channels in China for “made-in-Spain” goods by
opening flagship stores on Tmall (Alibaba’s China-focused
B2C marketplace). In addition, Alibaba will leverage El Corte
Inglés’ shipping capabilities and distribution centers in
Spain to support the local fulfillment services of AliExpress,
Alibaba’s global B2C marketplace.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 36

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

INTERCONTINENTAL
HOTELS GROUP
“As a leading hospitality company, IHG has always been
the pioneer in digital change to keep its pole position in an
increasingly technology driven and interconnected world.
In this digital era, we are fully devoted to providing the best
guest experience in a sustainable and global manner.”

Steven Zhong
VP, Hotel and Owner Solutions, IHG Greater China

FEATURED PRODUCTS About IHG

Elastic Compute Service
Secure, scalable, and high- IHG is is a global organisation with a broad portfolio of hotel
performing virtual servers
brands, including Regent Hotels & Resorts, InterContinental®
ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL Hotels & Resorts, Kimpton® Hotels & Restaurants, Hotel
Based on AliSQL to provide excellent Indigo®, EVEN® Hotels, HUALUXE® Hotels and Resorts,
stability and performance
Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, voco™ Hotels, Holiday
Cloud Enterprise Network Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, Holiday Inn Club Vacations®,
Create your own enterprise class Holiday Inn Resort®, avid™ hotels, Staybridge Suites®
global network
and Candlewood Suites®. IHG franchises, leases, manages
Smart Access Gateway or owns more than 5,400 hotels and 810,000 guest rooms
Connect enterprise networks to in almost 100 countries, with nearly 1,800 hotels in its
Alibaba Cloud
development pipeline. IHG also manages IHG® Rewards
Security Center Club, our global loyalty programme, which has more than
Security Center provides round the 100 million enrolled members. InterContinental Hotels Group
clock security and protection
PLC is the Group’s holding company and is incorporated
With more than 350 hotels in in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales. More
Greater China, IHG has made than 375,000 people work across IHG’s hotels and corporate
a sound decision to invest offices globally.
in a scalable and robust IT
infrastructure for reliable
services and long-term growth.
By working with Alibaba Cloud,
IHG will mesh technology with
best-in-class hospitality.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC
Crucial to Schneider Electric’s success was Alibaba Cloud’s
flexible Elastic Compute Servers (ECS) with auto scaling
features and load balancing capabilities to underwrite strong
reliability and manage traffic in real-time.

FEATURED PRODUCTS About Schneider Electric

Elastic Compute Services (ECS)
An online computing service that As one of the world’s top 500 companies, Schneider Electric
offers elastic and secure virtual cloud specializes in electricity distribution and automation
servers to cater to all your cloud
hosting needs. management, and has operations in more than 100 countries.

Table Store
The company offers an online, user-friendly energy
A fully managed NoSQL cloud
database service that enables storage management application known as Remote Energy
of a massive amount of structured
Management (REM), a platform that facilitates remote
and semi-structured data.
collection and storage of data and provides instant access to
MaxCompute real-time information. The application allows customers with
Conduct large-scale data
real-time and useful information, generates insights including
warehousing with MaxCompute
energy usage statistics and analysis, enables setting up of
Server Load Balancer energy consumption alarms and energy modeling.
Respond to sudden traffic spikes and
minimize response time with Server
Load Balancer
The Challenge
ApsaraDB for RDS
Alibaba Cloud ApsaraDB for RDS
is an on-demand database hosting
Schneider Electric required a cloud solution for its energy
service for MySQL, SQL Server management platform to manage high computational
and PostgreSQL with automated
monitoring, backup and disaster operations, which were essential for catering to client
recovery capabilities. requirements. As the business involves storage and analysis
of huge amounts of data, the company also needed a
Schneider Electric leverages
convenient and scalable storage solution to facilitate
the large-scale storage and
operations efficiently.
high-powered computation
off Alibaba Cloud to
deploy its remote energy
management platform.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Why Alibaba Cloud

Schneider Electric wanted a truly global cloud network to

power its application, including access to the China market
with its very high barriers to entry. Alibaba Cloud therefore
provided the global coverage Schneider Electric needed, as
well as providing advanced infrastructure to manage heavy
traffic on its cloud-based energy management application.

With the support of Alibaba Cloud’s click and deploy

infrastructure, Schneider Electric was able to make the
transition from a traditional equipment provider to a unique
and innovative online service provider. Crucial to Schneider
Electric’s success was Alibaba Cloud’s flexible Elastic
Compute Servers (ECS) with auto scaling features and load
balancing capabilities to underwrite strong reliability and
manage traffic in real-time.

Architecture

Products Used: Elastic Compute Service, Table Store,

MaxCompute, Server Load Balancer and ApsaraDB for RDS

The REM platform utilizes smart meters together with

gateways to collect energy consumption data, which is
remotely stored in Alibaba Cloud Table Store at a centralized
location. The company uses massive clusters of ECS servers
to concurrently process huge amounts of data and thereby
help clients to analyze energy consumption patterns.

Via Table Store, a NoSQL database service, we can store

massive volumes of customer energy usage data with
different structures. This product ensures that the addition
of a new data type doesn’t alter the standard data structure.
Also, its K-V data storage method maintains the query
efficiency even if the data volume increases exponentially.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 39

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

The Server Load Balancer monitors and directs traffic to

clusters and maintains an equitable distribution of load
on each cluster, ensuring consistent performance of the
deployment.

Final Word

“The elasticity and scalability provided by Alibaba Cloud

ECS ensures that our IT infrastructure can flexibly expand
alongside our business growth. What’s more, Alibaba Cloud
Table Store offers a convenient and flexible storage solution
to efficiently handle massive volumes of data for.”

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 40

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

WINDSOR BROKERS
“Alibaba Cloud offered a strong platform for Windsor Brokers
to grow their footprint, secure their operations and ultimately
bring their investors closer to the market. Windsor Brokers
invested in Alibaba Cloud’s promise and is now reaping the
dividends of low latency and best-in-class protection.”

FEATURED PRODUCTS About Windsor Brokers

Cloud Enterprise Network
A global network for rapidly building Windsor Brokers understands the value of being close to
a distributed business system and
market dynamics.
hybrid cloud to help users create
a network with enterprise level-
scalability and the communication
A global forex and CFD trading investment firm founded in
capabilities of a cloud network
1988, it runs a range of trading platforms. Its clients trade
Virtual Private Cloud in over 45 currencies, gold, oil, soft commodities, shares
A virtual private cloud service that
provides an isolated cloud network
and more using these. With the global trading environment
to operate resources in a secure becoming more globalized, Windsor Brokers saw their client
environment
base grow internationally. Diverse interests and themes drive
Anti-DDoS many of them to use the company’s platforms. It also meant
A comprehensive DDoS protection it could no longer afford latency, which dents its revenues
for enterprise to intelligently defend
sophisticated DDoS attacks, reduce and reputation.
business loss risks, and mitigate
potential security threats
The investment decided on an ambitious project to bring its
Windsor Brokers invested in international clients, especially those in China, closer to the
Alibaba Cloud promise and market by throttling its investment platforms. Specifically,
is now reaping the dividends it wanted to reduce its Europe-China connectivity latency
of low latency and best-in- from around 250 to 120 milliseconds. It achieved it by using
class protection. Alibaba Cloud.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Smart Routing

The cornerstone of Alibaba Cloud’s solution was its Cloud

Enterprise Network (CEN) offering. It is a highly available
network built on the high-performance and low-latency
global private network provided by Alibaba Cloud. CEN
enabled Windsor Brokers to establish private network
connections between Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks
in different regions and with on-premises data centers. It
meant the network traffic was not dependent on the public
internet infrastructure.

Automatic route distribution and learning fine-tuned network

traffic speeds. It improved the quality of cross-network
communication, interconnected with different network
resources and secured the in-transit data. It helped Windsor
Brokers to establish a strong interconnection network that
kept latency very low.

Robust Security

Alibaba Cloud also added Anti-DDoS protection to add

assurance to Windsor Brokers and its clients that its networks
are well guarded. The service, which is the default protection
system for the entire Alibaba Group, employs Alibaba Cloud’s
global scrubbing centers. It creates a secure network with
over 10 Tbps total mitigation capacity. Overall, Anti-DDoS
mitigates around 2,500 DDoS attacks on a daily basis and
protects against a DDoS attack of 1 Tbps.

The AI-enabled protection system is developed based on big

data and machine learning. Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS can
automatically mitigate sophisticated DDoS attacks and quickly
adjust protection policies based on the specific circumstances
of an attack. This helped Windsor effectively lower operations
and maintenance costs and ensure business stability.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Looking Forward

The combination Alibaba Cloud CEN and Anti-DDoS allowed

Windsor Brokers to automatically mitigate attacks and
reinforce the security of their trading platforms.

Alibaba Cloud offered a strong platform for Windsor Brokers

to grow their footprint, secure their operations and ultimately
bring their investors closer to the market. Windsor Brokers
invested in Alibaba Cloud’s promise and is now reaping the
dividends of low latency and best-in-class protection.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 43

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

MEDIAN TECHNOLOGIES
“Partnering with Alibaba Cloud has helped Median
Technologies optimize IT infrastructure and focus on pushing
the boundaries of today’s MedTech solutions to deliver better
patient care tomorrow.”

FEATURED PRODUCTS About Median Technologies

Elastic Compute Service
Elastic and secure virtual cloud Median Technologies is a European MedTech company that
servers to cater all your cloud hosting
offers innovative medical imaging solutions and services for
needs
patient care and clinical trials led by large pharmaceutical
Object Storage Service groups, Biotech companies and CROs. Median leverages
An encrypted and secure cloud
storage service that can store,
the most advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies to
process, and access massive push the boundaries of what medical imaging technologies
amounts of data from anywhere in
the world
can do in disease early diagnosis, prognosis and follow
up. The company helps improving patient care based on
Cloud Enterprise Network
precision medicine and accelerating the development of next-
A global network for rapidly building
a distributed business system and generation therapies for various types of cancer and chronic
hybrid cloud to help users create diseases.
a network with enterprise level-
scalability and the communication
capabilities of a cloud network
Challenge
Alibaba Cloud’s global
infrastructure and ICP filing
Median Technologies has developed a strong brand presence,
consulting service enabled
team and business in China, a challenging market to break
Median Technologies to
into, and was looking for a global partner able to serve its
establish its presence in the
imaging CRO business and operation ramp up. The company
China region, hassle free.
understood that it needed local technology and business
partners to achieve its expansion goals in the region and
better serve its biopharmaceutical customers in China.
Moreover, the company needed assistance with ICP filing, a
complex IT compliance required by the Chinese government
to host websites using local servers and Content Delivery
Network (CDN) infrastructure.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Why Alibaba Cloud

As a leading cloud service provider in APAC and across the

world , Alibaba Cloud was the obvious choice for Median
Technologies. Alibaba Cloud’s presence in Europe and
globally recognized technological innovations also meant that
Median Technologies could rely on one cloud service provider
for its cloud computing requirements, integrate their systems
using a single platform, and deliver imaging solutions and
services seamlessly.

Moreover, Alibaba Cloud offers an ICP Filing Consulting

Service that Median Technologies can leverage to deliver
services to its Chinese customers as per the rules set by the
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). All of
this meant that Alibaba Cloud is the perfect technology and
business partner Median Technologies needed.

Architecture

After doing preliminary testing, Median Technologies

preferred Alibaba Cloud as its cloud service provider across
China and Europe regions to support its imaging CRO
activities. The company deployed its platform with a cloud-
based architecture and hosted its innovative solutions.

Effectively, Median Technologies migrated a large part of its

on-premises infrastructure to the Alibaba Cloud Frankfurt
availability zones, allowing it to cut down infrastructure
spending while maintaining its solutions’ high-performance.
The company uses Elastic Compute Service (ECS) clusters
for platform deployment and processing requirements. It
leverages multiple storage types offered by Object Storage
Service (OSS) to store and retrieve intelligence and insight
securely, optimally, and cost-effectively.

Moreover, Median Technologies relies on Alibaba Cloud

Enterprise Network (CEN) so their teams can easily access

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 45

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

their technology infrastructure and their partners and

affiliates in China can seamlessly collaborate and deliver
better imaging solutions faster.

Looking Forward

Partnering with Alibaba Cloud has helped Median

Technologies optimize IT infrastructure and focus on pushing
the boundaries of today’s MedTech solutions to deliver better
patient care tomorrow. As Alibaba Cloud continues to lead
and deliver cloud solutions with its innovative DNA, Median
Technologies can be assured that its MedTech innovations
continue to break barriers without needing to think twice
about its IT infrastructure.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 46

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

SPLIO
Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive suite of global cloud
computing tools and wide range of managed services
allows Splio to concentrate on delivering a high-quality
marketing product to their customers and not worry about IT
performance.

FEATURED PRODUCTS About Splio

CDN
A scalable and high-performance Splio is a SaaS New Loyalty Marketing Platform that
content delivery service for
accelerated distribution of content to
combines such services as New Loyalty Engine and
users across the globe Marketing Automation with Mobile activation, including
mobile wallets, mini-programs, to enable marketers
MaxCompute
A fast and fully-hosted TB/PB-level
to acquire, activate, engage and retain customers with
data warehousing solution personalized communications on all channels, driving loyalty
and revenue for brands. Over 500 brands in a diverse number
ECS
Secure, scalable, and high- of sectors such as retail, food and beverage, travel, education,
performing virtual servers consumer packaged goods, and e-commerce are all using
Splio worldwide.
Machine Learning Platform for AI
An end-to-end platform to meet your
machine learning and data mining In China, where other international companies may struggle
needs
to catch up to one of the most tech-savvy consumer bases in
By leveraging the computing the world, Splio allows international brands to better engage
capabilities and technologies with their customers and succeed through leveraging the
of Alibaba Cloud, Splio most relevant digital touchpoints such as a 360 degree views
can concentrate on its core of their brands.
business model of helping
brands be successful through
their loyalty marketing
Challenge
platform.
Splio started its China operations in Beijing in 2011 with a
data center located in Hong Kong. At first, Splio concentrated
on helping its existing Europe-based customers that were
looking for trustable partners while expanding to the Chinese
market. After years of developing their business in China
it became essential to not only buildup operations within
China, but also establish a network of partners, and more
importantly find the right technical solutions to support their
booming business.

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 47

Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Solution

Ultimately, Alibaba Cloud was selected as Splio’s Cloud

partner because of their superior performance, low cost,
and proximity to Splio’s Headquarters in Paris. The Splio IT
team regularly met with Alibaba Cloud solution architects to
monitor the migration process.

As of today, Splio is using Alibaba Cloud as an IaaS server

host for all its China-based customers. They are currently
operating 90 servers in Hangzhou storing over 5 Terabytes
of data. Alibaba Cloud’s fast development of a wide range
of tools and services allows Alibaba Cloud to support
Splio’s goal of automating their Cloud infrastructure. By
implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Splio leveraged
Alibaba Cloud’s Terraform solution to deploy servers faster.
Currently, Splio is using and exploring managed services
such as Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes
(ACK). By using this service, Splio no longer needs to
maintain these clusters, which saves them time and allows
them to focus on their core business.

Why Alibaba Cloud

As a SaaS Marketing platform, Splio’s primary role is

to host and manage customer data, providing security
guarantees and ensuring all operations are compliant with
local regulations, specifically GDPR in Europe and CSL in
China. Alibaba Cloud’s comprehensive suite of global cloud
computing tools and wide range of managed services
allows Splio to concentrate on delivering a high-quality
marketing product to their customers and not worry about IT
performance.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

CALEFFI AND
SPARKFABRIK
“SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud helped Caleffi face new
challenges by offering technological assistance, consultancy
services, and operative solutions. This collaboration enabled
the Italian headquarters to gain complete control of its
Chinese digital property while at the same time giving full
management autonomy to the Chinese branch.”

FEATURED PRODUCTS About Caleffi and SparkFabrik

ICP Registration Support
Learn how to obtain an ICP Filing or Caleffi Hydronic Solutions is a leader in producing heating, air
ICP Commercial License to host your conditioning, plumbing, and renewable system components
website in Mainland China.
for domestic and industrial use and in the supply of avant-
SparkFabrik partnered with garde system solutions.
Alibaba Cloud to deliver a
robust solution for Caleffi On the other hand, SparkFabrik is an Italian tech company
Hyrdonic Solutions to ensure supporting businesses in complex digital transformation
success in the dynamic processes by designing and building cloud-native
Chinese market. applications, cloud systems, and infrastructures through
modern DevOps techniques.

Challenge

Globally, China is one of the most digitally connected markets

today, and the Chinese market offers enormous possibilities
for Italian products and services. It also holds a strategic role
in the digital field, where new technology, consumer, and
business models are surfacing.

As Caleffi Hydronic Solutions celebrated 20 years of activity

in China in 2019, reaching and guaranteeing a digital
experience in China equivalent to the one in any other part of
the world in terms of efficiency, safety, contents control, and
usability emerged as the new challenge for the company.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
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The company’s focus shifted to improve its brand positioning

in the Chinese digital market, offering a web UX equal
or superior to the local competitors and having an easily
updatable platform in Chinese territory.

Why Alibaba Cloud

Caleffi collaborated with SparkFabrik to build and manage

the Drupal-based multi-country software platform for Caleffi’s
corporate website. Thanks to SparkFabrik’s strong partnership
with Alibaba Cloud, it can provide European enterprises the
solid continuity needed to succeed in the Chinese market.

SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud helped Caleffi face new

challenges by offering technological assistance, consultancy
services, and operative solutions. This collaboration enabled
the Italian headquarters to gain complete control of its
Chinese digital property while at the same time giving full
management autonomy to the Chinese branch.

Architecture

Caleffi leveraged various services and solutions from

SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud such as:

1. Consultancy Process, ICP Filing Caleffi needed to complete

the ICP Filing and PSB registration procedures to host their
applications on servers situated in the Chinese territory.
Through the SparkFabrik consultancy services, the ICP Filing
procedure – a potentially complicated procedure when
not performed by an experienced partner – was efficiently
completed in just 20 days.

2. Multi-Cloud Strategy and PaaS SparkFabrik took care

of the migration of the application infrastructure of Caleffi
Hydronic Solutions on the Cloud, with a development and
implementation approach based on the best practices known
as The Twelve-Factor App methodology, directed to software

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
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development as a service application. The introduction

of SparkFabrik Cloud DevOps Platform™ allowed Caleffi
to realize a high-availability multi-cloud platform. In
addition, SparkFabrik leveraged its LOOKATME Analytics™
performance measuring tool to provide Caleffi with a clear
vision of how Caleffi should access its digital properties and
engage users in China. With the passage to the multi-cloud
strategy and the Chinese request on the new infrastructure,
the new performance indicators in Chinese territories showed
an improvement of 198%, going from a global performance
index of 20 to the present 90.

Looking Forward

With years of productive and virtuous collaboration, Caleffi

and SparkFabrik embarked together on many projects and
challenges. With the focus on expansion and growth in China,
Caleffi views partnership with SparkFabrik and Alibaba Cloud
as more strategic and imperative to success in the dynamic
Chinese market.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
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HUNGRYPANDA
“We plan to continue our expansion by gaining market share
in existing markets, moving into new markets and rolling out
new products and solutions. That’s why we will continue to
partner with Alibaba Cloud.”

Jon Hsu
General Manager of HungryPanda LTD

FEATURED PRODUCTS About HungryPanda

Alibaba Cloud E-Commerce Solution
Alibaba Cloud enables your HungryPanda LTD is a London-headquartered specialist food
e-commerce business to grow
delivery platform that connects consumers with businesses
beyond the great.
selling authentic Chinese food and groceries. HungryPanda’s
Retail Solutions founders launched the company in March 2017 with a vision:
Alibaba Cloud enables digital retail
To become a global leader in the specialist food delivery
transformation to fuel growth and
realize an omnichannel customer industry. Four years later, HungryPanda has operations in 60
experience throughout the consumer
major cities across ten countries. The company consistently
journey.
posted triple-digit annual volume growth and expects the
Elastic Compute Service
trend to continue in the years ahead.
Elastic and secure virtual cloud
servers to cater all your cloud hosting
needs.
Challenge
Through its partnership with Navigating the Pandemic-Powered Surge in
Alibaba Cloud, HungryPanda Online Food Deliveries
LTD turned the challenges
posed by the pandemic to Covid-19 made e-commerce a necessity. As businesses and
the food delivery industry consumers around the world navigated lockdowns and
into opportunities. supply chain disruptions last year, online platforms provided
a much-needed lifeline, forever changing the way we transact.
The pandemic accelerated the shift to e-commerce by as
much as six years, according to some estimates.

Online grocery and food takeout deliveries posted

stellar growth last year, and HungryPanda was among
the companies that experienced a surge in demand. The
surge presented challenges and opportunities in equal
measure. Making the most of them required the right
technology partner.

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

Why Alibaba Cloud

Scaling to Meet Demand Amid the Pandemic

Central to HungryPanda’s success is its strategic partnership

with Alibaba Cloud: “We didn’t come this far on our own,”
says Jon Hsu, General Manager of HungryPanda LTD. “We
have a great team, great investors and great partners. Alibaba
Cloud is one of those great partners. Our platform is running
100 percent on Alibaba Cloud. Their cloud-native solutions
and global coverage provided us with really important
resources and tools that enabled us to expand our business
on a global scale.”

Architecture
Cloud Native from Day One

Growing the business across ten countries on four continents

was no easy task. Yet, by partnering with Alibaba Cloud,
HungryPanda avoided the scalability and elasticity challenges
that most e-commerce companies face when expanding
across borders. Alibaba Cloud’s Platform as a Service (PaaS)
and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions provided
the perfect foundations for growth. In turn, HungryPanda
was able to optimize its services to meet evolving
customer needs.

Never was the power of this partnership clearer than during

the Covid-19 pandemic: “There was a surge in demand for
app-based delivery services,” Jon says. “In some cities,
we experienced a 600 percent increase in volume. That
required allocating resources to manage delivery times,
communication, quality control and more, all while ensuring
that our app ran smoothly. Our partnership with Alibaba
Cloud made that possible.”

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
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Looking Forward

In many cases, these new consumer habits appear set to

stick. In the UK, for instance, more than 50% of people in a
recent survey said they plan to continue ordering groceries
online after the pandemic. In the US, only 39% of consumers
in a different survey said they ordered groceries online before
the pandemic. That number doubled during the pandemic,
with nearly 57% planning to continue the habit afterwards. All
of this bodes well for HungryPanda’s future.

“We believe that our growth is sustainable,” Jon says. “We

plan to continue our expansion by gaining market share in
existing markets, moving into new markets and rolling out
new products and solutions. That’s why we will continue to
partner with Alibaba Cloud.”

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Mission and Supporting Business A Leader in Products and Getting Started
Customer Stories Conclusion
Background Transformation Technology Solutions with Alibaba Cloud

CONCLUSION
Alibaba Cloud offers a complete range of cloud services to
customers worldwide, including elastic computing, databases,
networking, security management, application services,
big data analytics, machine learning, and IoT services to
support virtually any workload. With Alibaba Cloud, users
have access to highly durable storage, efficient computing,
high-performance databases, intelligent analytical tools, and
more. Users can access all this without any up-front cost by
only paying for what they use. These services help enterprises
move faster, lower IT costs, and scale.

If you have any queries about getting started with Alibaba

Cloud or specific questions about our products and services,
please reach out to your nearest Alibaba Cloud representative.
We are more than happy to be of assistance to you.

For more information, please visit

www.alibabacloud.com/contact-sales

An Introduction to Alibaba Cloud 55