Alibaba Technology Leadership Advances a New Global Economy at This Year’s Double 11 Shopping Festival

Alibaba Group has successfully leveraged its innovative technologies in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud computing during the 2016 11.11 Global Shopping Festival which finished a few hours ago. These supported Alibaba’s online marketplaces and facilitated a record-breaking 175,000 orders per second seen during unpredictable peak traffic spikes, without incident. 

“Alibaba Group has advanced from an e-commerce company to a global technology leader, enabling us to power the future of retail through the latest technologies in big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality. The 2016 11.11 Global Online Shopping Festival was a showcase for our ground-breaking innovations such as an interactive Virtual Reality shopping experience, and used advanced machine learning algorithms to create personalized customer experiences,” said Mr. Jeff Zhang, Chief Technology Officer, Alibaba Group.  

Backed by the world’s largest hybrid cloud architecture with scalable computing power, advanced real-time data processing and analytic capabilities, Alibaba Group facilitated an unprecedented volume of transactions during the 24-hour global event. Apsara, the super computational engine developed by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, ensured that networks and systems were scaled to enable unprecedented volumes and efficiently matched buyers and sellers worldwide 

Other advanced technology capabilities supporting the end-to-end shopping experience included: a global content delivery network (CDN) deployed for the live streaming of the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival gala; OceanBase, which ensured transaction completion on AliPay with zero order-dropping and zero faults, as well as Alibaba’s comprehensive security measures and proven anti-DDoS capability.  

Alibaba Cloud’s technologies were not only the digital foundation for the world’s largest online shopping event, but also demonstrated the Group’s vision of servicing all sectors with data technologies in order to enable them to participate in the new global economy.  

“Alibaba Cloud’s technologies lay the infrastructure cornerstone for commerce in the future, enabling marketplaces, payments, logistics, and a host of technology capabilities including computing, big data and artificial intelligence, to work together seamlessly. We believe that cloud computing and data technologies are the twin engines powering the future global economy and will drive transformation across all industries. This year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, is testimony in itself that our technologies are ready to advance a new economic environment and help SMEs and businesses of all sizes, across all sectors, to expand on a global scale,” said Mr. Yunfei He, senior product manager of Alibaba Cloud. 

In line with Alibaba’s mission to “make it easy to do business anywhere”, Alibaba Cloud offers enterprises improved efficiency, enabled by insightful data intelligence. The adoption of cloud infrastructure as a service in conjunction with developer tools helps enterprises shorten the software development life cycle, provides access to data analytics and machine learning platforms, reduces costs and improves operational efficiencies. Today, Alibaba Cloud is leveraging these capabilities to both service internal IT infrastructure needs, as well as empower 2.3 million customers across industries worldwide to accelerate their business growth.