Category Archives: Aliyun

Alibaba, Aliyun, Big Data, developers, News & Analysis, Xiao Wei

Alibaba launches what it claims to be China’s first cloud AI platform

Aliyun has launched what it claims to be China's first AI platform

Aliyun has launched what it claims to be China’s first AI platform

Alibaba’s cloud computing division Aliyun has launched what it claims to be China’s first artificial intelligence cloud service.

The DT PAI platform has been built with a series of purpose-built algorithms and machine learning technologies designed to help users generate predictive intelligence insights. Aliyun said the service features “drag and drop” capabilities that let users easily connect different services and set parameters.

The company claims the platform is China’s first commercially available artificial intelligence platform.

“Our goal is to create a one-stop AI development, publishing and sharing platform through data calculations and data connections, all with the aim of using AI to drive innovation in all aspects of life,” said Xiao Wei, senior product expert, Aliyun.

“In the past, the field of artificial intelligence was only open to a very small number of qualified developers and required the use of specialised tools. Such an approach was prone to error and redundancy. Hoewver, DT PAI allows developers with little or no experience in the field to construct a data application from scratch in a much shorter period of time. What used to take days can be completed within minutes,” Wei added.

The platform is based on Aliyuns recently update big data cloud infrastructure and its Open Data Processing Service (ODPS).

Alibaba seems to be following IBM’s lead on when it comes to AI. Big Blue has been using Bluemix as a drag-and-drop platform for Watson, IBM’s cognitive compute (AI) as a service, pitching it as a more accessible development and delivery platform for its big data services.

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Alibaba to set up cloud datacentre, HQ in Singapore

Alibaba is adding a datacentre in Singapore, where it will also place its international HQ

Alibaba is adding a datacentre in Singapore, where it will also place its international HQ

Alibaba’s cloud computing division Aliyun revealed plans to set up a datacentre in Singapore, where it also plans to base its overseas business headquarters.

The Singapore datacentre, its seventh globally, will host the company’s growing suite of cloud services and link up with its existing datacentres in Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley.

“The cloud datacentre in Singapore is a key milestone in our strategy to help businesses of all sizes innovate and scale, wherever they are based, and however they choose to grow,” said Sicheng Yu, vice president of Aliyun. “Aliyun offers a unique combination of services for success in the cloud, including high-volume cloud-based transaction support and quality assurance for cloud computing services.”

Singapore will also be home to the company’s international headquarters, where its global business outside of China will be managed.

Aliyun claims demand for its cloud services is growing at a whopping 82 per cent, with revenues from its cloud services more than doubling year on year. The company said it has over 1.8 million cloud customers as of June this year.

Last month Aliyun’s parent Alibaba announced plans to plough $1bn into its cloud computing division, which cloud give it the scale it needs to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon and Google. In addition to the Singapore datacentre, which is scheduled to go live in September this year, the company also plans to add cloud datacentres in the Middle East, Japan, and in various countries in Europe as part of that investment.

At the time the company said it also plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships through its recently announced Marketplace Alliance Program, a move that sees it partnering with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

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Alibaba looks to quantum computing for next-gen cloud

Aliyun is looking at fostering quantum computing skills and technology, potentially for future applications in its cloud

Aliyun is looking at fostering quantum computing skills and technology, potentially for future applications in its cloud

Alibaba’s cloud computing unit Aliyun has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) that will see the two set up a quantum computing lab to study the technology’s applications in security, networking and cloud computing.

The lab will focus on experimenting with quantum theory in a bid to develop novel security technologies for e-commerce and datacentres (including, potentially, its own) and bolstering computing performance.

“The CAS – Alibaba Quantum Computing Laboratory will undertake frontier research on systems that appear the most promising in realizing the practical applications of quantum computing,” said Jianwei Pan, executive vice president of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and a CAS member.

“The laboratory will combine the technical advantages of Aliyun in classical calculation algorithms, structures and cloud computing with those of CAS in quantum computing, quantum analog computing and quantum artificial intelligence, so as to break the bottlenecks of Moore’s Law and classical computing,” Pan said.

The organisations said they want the lab to become a hub for international research in quantum computing and help create local talent in quantum computing.

Jian Wang, chief technology officer of Alibaba Group said: “This investment in the development and application of quantum computing reflects the scale and clarity of our long-term vision to collaborate with partners in an ecosystem model towards the sustained development of the economy and society.”

“New discoveries in information security and computing capacity based on quantum computing could be as significant in the future as big data technologies are today,” he added.

Quantum computing offers a number of benefits – the biggest being its theoretical ability to crunch eye-watering amounts of data extremely quickly, which means security monitoring and defence as well as big data and HPC are looking like the best applications for the technology so far. But quantum computing in practice is still quite nascent and confronted by a range of challenges – cost, lack of software, lack of commercial availability, lack of standards at the processor level are some of the biggest.

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Alibaba takes aim at AWS, Google, Microsoft, pours $1bn into global cloud rollout

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba is pouring $1bn into its cloud division to support global expansion

Alibaba announced plans this week to plough $1bn into its cloud computing division, Aliyun, in a bid to expand the company’s presence and establish new datacentres internationally. The move may give it the scale it needs to compete more effectively with the likes of Amazon and Google.

The company currently operates five datacentre in China and Hong Kong, and earlier this year set up a datacentre in Silicon Valley aimed at local startups and Chinese multinational corporations.

The $1bn in additional investment will go towards setting up new cloud datacentres in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and in various countries across Europe.

“Aliyun has become a world-class cloud computing service platform that is the market leader in China, bearing the fruits of our investment over the past six years. As the physical and digital are becoming increasingly integrated, Aliyun will serve as an essential engine in this new economy,” said Daniel Zhang, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group.

“This additional US$ 1 billion investment is just the beginning; our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities, and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure. We want to enable businesses to connect directly with consumers and drive productivity using data. Ultimately, our goal is to help businesses successfully transition from an era of information technology to data technology,” Zhang said.

The company said it also plans to use the funds to expand its partnerships through its recently announced Marketplace Alliance Program, a move that sees it partnering with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

The investment if anything confirms Alibaba’s intent to grow well beyond Asia and displace other large public cloud providers like AWS, IBM and Google, which already boast significant global scale.

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Alibaba to bolster cloud performance, proposes data protection pact

Alibaba is boosting the performance of its cloud services and reassuring customers on data protection

Alibaba is boosting the performance of its cloud services and reassuring customers on data protection

Alibaba unveiled a series of performance upgrades to its cloud platform this week in a bid to compete more effectively for big data workloads with other large cloud incumbents, and clarified its position on data protection.

The company said it is adding solid state drive (SSD) backed cloud storage, which will massively improve read-write performance over its existing HDD-based offerings, and virtual private cloud services (VPC) for high performance compute and analytics workloads. It’s also boosting performance with virtualised GPU-based technology.

“The huge amount of data and advanced computing capacity has brought great business opportunities to the industry,” said Wensong Zhang, chief technology officer of Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud division.

“Deep learning and high-performance computing have been widely adopted in Alibaba Group for internal use. Aliyun will roll out high-performance computing services and accelerators based on GPU technology that could be applied in image recognition and deep learning to expand the boundaries of business,” Zhang said.

The company also released what it is calling a data protection pact. In its proposal Alibaba said customers will have “absolute ownership” over all of the data generated or sent to the company’s cloud services, and the “right to select whatever services they choose to securely process their data.”

It also said it would strengthen its threat protection and disaster recovery capabilities in order to reassure customers of its ability to guard their data – and the data of their clients. The company did not, however, cite any specific standards or internationally recognised guidelines on data protection in its plans.

“Without the self-discipline exercised by the banking industry, the financial and economic prosperity that exists in modern-day society would not have ensued. Similarly, without common consensus and concrete action dedicated to data protection, the future for the [data technology] economy would be dim,” the company said in a statement.

“We hereby promise to strictly abide by this pledge, and encourage the entire industry to collectively exercise the self-regulation that is vital in promoting the sustainable development of this data technology economy.”

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Alibaba announces partner programme to boost cloud efforts

Alibaba's partner programme will help it expand internationally

Alibaba’s partner programme will help it expand internationally

Alibaba’s cloud division Aliyun has launched a global partnership programme aimed at bolstering global access to its cloud services.

The company’s Marketplace Alliance Program (MAP) will see it partner with large tech and datacentre operators, initially including Intel, Singtel, Meeras, Equinix and PCCW among others to help localise its cloud computing services and grow its ecosystem.

“The new Aliyun program is designed to bring our customers the best cloud computing solutions by partnering with some of the most respected technology brands in the world. We will continue to bring more partners online to grow our cloud computing ecosystem,” said Sicheng Yu, vice president, Aliyun.

Raejeanne Skillern, general manager of cloud service provider business at Intel said: “For years Intel and Alibaba have collaborated on optimizing hardware and software technology across the data center for Alibaba’s unique workloads. As a partner in Aliyun’s Marketplace Alliance Program, Intel looks forward to continuing our collaboration to promoting joint technology solutions that are based on Intel Architecture specifically tailored to the rapidly growing market of international public cloud consumers.”

The move is part of Alibaba’s efforts to rapidly expand its presence internationally. This year the company put its first datacentre in the US, and just last week announced Equinix would offer direct access to its cloud platform globally. The company, often viewed as the Chinese Amazon, also plans to set up a joint venture with Meeras in Dubai that specialises in systems integration with a focus on big data and cloud-based services.

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Equinix to offer direct access to Alibaba’s cloud service

Equinix will offer direct links to Alibaba's cloud

Equinix will offer direct links to Alibaba’s cloud

Equinix has signed an agreement with Alibaba that will see the American datacentre incumbent provide direct access to Chinese ecommerce firm’s cloud computing service.

The deal will see Equinix add Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud computing division, to its growing roster of cloud services integrated with its cloud interconnection service, and offer direct access to Aliyun’s IaaS and SaaSs in both Asia and North America.

Equinix said it’s aiming this primarily at large multinationals looking to expand their infrastructure into Asia.

“Our multi-national enterprise customers are increasingly asking for access to the Aliyun cloud platform, as they deploy cloud-based applications across Asia,” said Chris Sharp, vice president of cloud innovation, Equinix.

“By providing this access in two strategic markets, we’re empowering businesses to build secure, private clouds, without compromising network and application performance,” Sharp said.

Sicheng Yu, vice president of Aliyun said: “Aliyun is very excited about our global partnership with Equinix, who not only has a global footprint of cutting-edge datacentres, but has also brought together the most abundant cloud players and tenants in the cloud computing ecosystem on its Equinix Cloud Exchange platform. Connecting the Equinix ecosystem with our Aliyun cloud services on Cloud Exchange will provide customers with the best-of-breed choices and flexibility.”

The move will see Equinix expand its reach in Asia, a fast-growing market for cloud services, and comes just one week after Equinix announced it would bolster its European footprint with the TelecityGroup merger.

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Sinopec taps Alibaba for cloud, analytics services

Sinopec is working with Aliyun to roll out a series of cloud and big data services

Sinopec is working with Aliyun to roll out a series of cloud and big data services

Aliyun, Alibaba’s cloud services division is working with China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) to roll out a set of cloud-based services and big data technologies to enable the firm to improve is exploration and production operations.

In a statement to BCN the companies said they will work together to roll out a “shared platform for building-based business systems, big data analytics” and other IT services tailored to the petroleum industry.

“We hope to be able to use Alibaba’s technology and experience in dealing with large-scale system architecture, multi-service data sharing, data applications in the large-scale petrochemical, oil and chemical industry operations,” Sinopec said.

The two companies also plan to explore the role of cloud and big data in connected vehicles.

Just last month Aliyun opened its first overseas datacentre in Silicon Valley, a move the Chinese e-commerce giant said will bolster its appeal to Chinese multinational companies.

The company has already firmed up partnerships with large multinationals including PayPal and Dutch electronics giant Philips. The company has five datacentres in China.

It would seem a number of large oil and gas firms have begun to warm to the cloud as of late. Earlier this week Anadarko Petroleum Corporation announced it had signed a five year deal that would see the firm roll out PetroDE’s cloud-based oil and gas field evaluation analytics service.