Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of giant Chinese online retailer, Alibaba, has unveiled its global marketplace and AliLaunch programs for international technology partners to enter the China market through its cloud initiatives.
The announcement by Alibaba – which recently announced it will open its first Australian office later this year - coincides with its partnership between Alibaba Cloud and HTC to “pioneer” the development of innovative smart technologies, the release of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and a new logo for its cloud business.
Sicheng Yu, Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Global, says by leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s cloud computing expertise, AliLaunch assists technology partners overcoming “common obstacles that international companies have when expanding into China including scalability and technology compatibility”.
“Through AliLaunch, these partners can leverage a variety of value added offerings such as joint ventures, marketplace partnerships and wholesaling to capitalise on this growing market, Yu said.
{loadposition peter}“The introduction of AliLaunch demonstrates Alibaba Cloud’s ongoing commitment of building a global cloud computing ecosystem, which connects SaaS developers and business partners from different countries on a unified platform. The AliLaunch program and Global Technology Partners Marketplace serve as the perfect platforms for making different software products accessible to businesses and organizations in China”
Yu says Alibaba is aiming to build AliLaunch as the “TMall1 of the cloud computing industry, with more technology partners added in the future”.
Global Technology Partners already participating in Alibaba Cloud’s marketplaces include SAP, Suse, Here, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), Check Point, AppScale, AppEx Networks, Haivision, Hillstone Networks, Wowza Media Systems and TruelDC.
On its strategic partnership with Taiwanese global smartphone giant and consumer electronics company, HTC, Alibaba says both companies will explore high scalable and price-competitive virtual reality (“VR”) solutions, using cloud computing, for customers worldwide.
Ge Jin, Business Architect Director at Alibaba Cloud says the companies will focus on developing breakthrough innovative solutions to tackle bandwidth allocation, data transmission and data processing needs in areas such as VR video production and VR broadcasting – and bring together industry developers to build a VR cloud ecosystem and extend ‘Viveport’, HTC's VR app store to Alibaba Cloud’s cloud computing platform.
“Cloud computing has continuously broken the boundaries of what we thought possible, accelerating the rate of innovation. The partnership between Alibaba Cloud and HTC will bring two of the world’s most disruptive technologies together to bring more value to businesses looking to leverage VR and cloud,” Jin said.
Alvin Wang Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, HTC says that by leveraging computing expertise and the developer ecosystem built on Alibaba Cloud, HTC Vive will provide “more reliable, stable services to VR solution developers with better access to (the) China market”.
Alibaba Cloud’s launch of a comprehensive suite of solutions in video, image and speech recognition technologies through its AI program, ET, shows how its AI technologies could be leveraged in different industries to help customers gain efficiency, monitor risks and minimise costs, including:
• Video Recognition of Basketball Movement: Combining the analysis of videos from sporting events with deep learning services, athletes’ performance can be profiled to determine their behaviour, which provides valuable data analysis for the sports industry
• Image Processing: Identifying and describing images accurately through image and caption processing to allow machines to “read” images instantaneously
• Smart Customer Hotline: This speech recognition technology automatically records voice messages of customer service representatives into text format and structures the content and key messages to allow for monitoring of customer service quality, analysis of consumer sentiment and risk control
• Real-time Broadcast Transliteration: Real-time transcription of audio of live broadcasts into subtitles, which can monitor and edit content during live shows
• Customised Recommendation: Built on the basis of big data analytics, providing customized service and support based on users’ purchasing behaviour and interests.
According to Alibaba Cloud, the succinct symbolic design of the new logo “elegantly demonstrates Alibaba Cloud’s mission of achieving limitless value, and is “inspired by the language of programming and represents the dream of Alibaba Cloud expanding its services from China into international markets”.