Traditional businesses are delving into cloud services as part of their digital transformation. One of the key players in the cloud services industry is Alibaba Cloud.
The cloud computing company saw RM6bil revenue in Q4 2019
WITH more and more entrepreneurs looking to online retail instead of brick and mortar stores, the demand for cloud-based storage services has soared sky-high.
Ecommerce has become a multibillion dollar industry, giving rise to greater demand for companies which offer information storage services.
One of the key players in the cloud services industry is Alibaba Cloud, the data intelligence backbone of China-based ecommerce giant Alibaba Group.
As the largest cloud computing company in the Asia Pacific region, Alibaba Cloud charted an impressive 62% increase year-on-year for its third quarter, driven by increased revenue contributions from both public cloud and hybrid cloud businesses.
The stellar performance results are a clear indication of customers’ trust in the brand and Alibaba Cloud’s expertise in empowering businesses in their journey towards digital transformation.
According to the recent Alibaba Earnings Report for the quarter ended December 2019, Alibaba Cloud chalked up a remarkable RMB10bil (RM5.94bil) revenue year-on-year over a single quarter, marking a new milestone for its cloud business.
Although the young subsidiary only makes up 7% of Alibaba's revenue, the company is primed for further growth this year as more and more traditional businesses go digital and delve into cloud services. This also takes into account new businesses that are looking to have a technological edge over their competitors to be ahead of the pack.
“Our digital economy reached new heights with another record 11.11 Global Shopping Festival for our merchants and partners. Continued investment in user engagement contributed to strong gains in annual active consumers, ” said Alibaba Group chairman and chief executive officer Daniel Zhang who expressed confidence in a robust 2020.
The strong results reflect the company’s strategic focus on user acquisition and engagement as well as on enhancing product variety and increasing price-competitive product offerings.
During last year’s 11.11, Alibaba achieved a record US$38.4bil (RM159.8bil) worth of gross merchandise volume (GMV), with the first billion achieved in just 68 seconds. This translated to 544,000 orders per second during peak volume with orders from all over the world and 970 petabytes of data for the day’s transactions, managed by Alibaba Cloud with zero downtime.
Transactions during Taobao Live alone generated nearly US$2.8bil in sales, with a new, real-time communications framework for audio and video helping consumers on Alibaba Cloud. Network latency was reduced to 1.5 seconds from five to seven seconds, improving real-time interaction experience between broadcasters and users. Video AI identified products mentioned by broadcasters during live streaming, and audiences could view product links simultaneously displayed onscreen.
Given the company’s expert handling of the record-breaking, 24-hour global shopping festival, consumers were able to enjoy a better shopping experience due to the live streaming and voice shopping.
Live-broadcast is a new trend in e-commerce that has become one of the fastest selling formats in China. Live-streaming requires strong cloud computing support with sufficient band width and storage. Alibaba Cloud has fulfilled this role effectively and staked its position as the cloud provider to depend on for long-term business growth.
Following the successful migration of the core systems of Alibaba’s e-commerce businesses onto the public cloud, the success of the one-day event proved the company was more than capable of generating greater operating efficiencies for the Group.
All these demonstrates the company’s scalable, secure and robust infrastructure, complemented by the strength of its leading cyber security technology in the public cloud environment which will further encourage more customers to adopt its systems.
Thanks to Alibaba Cloud's scalable technology, the company's public cloud infrastructure will be able to support all businesses to achieve optimal digital transactions and activities even when they experience exponential growth.
