Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, was named a “Leader” in The Forrester Wave™ Public Cloud Container Platforms Q1 2022, among the eight most significant players evaluated.

Recognised as a leader in the field by Forrester for the first time, Alibaba Cloud also obtained the highest score among all evaluated vendors in the current offering category assessing platform experience, cloud-native application development, container runtime and registries, platform operations and platform infrastructure.

“Container technology has become an integral part of the digital transformation process, and we are glad to be acknowledged as a ‘Leader’ in the public cloud container platform market by Forrester. As the demands around digitalization grow and evolve, it is important for businesses of all industries to have flexible access to cloud-native technology that will allow them to position themselves efficiently in the market. We look forward to supporting our clients on their digital and innovation journeys as well as continuing to collaborate with ecosystem partners to develop new cloud-native applications,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

The report highlighted that Alibaba Cloud now offers container services on six continents and contributes sustainably to the global open-source cloud-native community with seven Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox projects. The report also acknowledged that more than 90% of all Alibaba Group’s applications run on Alibaba Cloud’s container services, which enabled the company to excel in developing cloud-native services for clients looking to digitalize their businesses.

“Alibaba Cloud is a great fit for global enterprises targeting China and Asia Pacific markets or local firms going abroad that seek comprehensive cloud-native capabilities for digital transformation with proven experiences,” wrote Forrester in the report.

The Forrester Wave™ used a 29-criteria evaluation framework to identify public cloud container platform providers with track records of excellence in accelerating cloud-native application development via prebuilt services and automation, enabling automated platform operations in distributed environments and creating enterprise value through cloud-native marketplace and partner ecosystems.

As Alibaba Group’s own cloud provider, Alibaba Cloud supports the world’s biggest shopping festival 11.11 every year. During 11.11 2021, use of 100% cloud-native technologies reduced computing resources by 50% for every 10,000 transactions compared to the previous year.

In April last year, Alibaba Cloud was named a Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) leader in The Forrester Wave™: Function-As-A-Service Platforms, Q1 2021 report.

To view the Forrester report, please click here.

“The Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 will not just be remembered by the excitement and the phenomenal achievements brought by the athletes from across the world, but also for the new benchmarks it had set for driving a more efficient, sustainable and inclusive Olympic Games,” said Jeff Zhang, President, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “We are proud to be supporting the digitalization of the Olympic Games, and we hope our experience in hosting Beijing 2022’s core operating systems on Alibaba Cloud will be passed on to future sporting events.”

Advanced cloud capability to boost organizer efficiency

The IOC and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (BOCOG) executed a master plan for the Olympic Winter Games. It includes the implementation of key operational systems delivered by the IOC’s Worldwide IT Partner Atos, such as the Games Management Systems (GMS), Olympics Management Systems (OMS) and Olympics Distribution Systems (ODS). These have all been migrated to Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure.

The Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 has realized a further move to cloud-based services, further reducing the time and cost investment on IT infrastructure, hardware and associated management. With the advanced cloud-based capability to analyze real-time intelligence, the planning and management for Beijing 2022 was further streamlined and improved for more seamless user experience.

Taking advantage of the scalability, reliability and security features of the cloud infrastructure, event organizers like the IOC can reduce the complexity of the game planning based on intelligence-driven decisions; striking for the right balance between optimizing existing resources and creating new ones. That way hosting cities can also reduce the time and costs associated with the legacy physical infrastructure investment upfront.

Cloud technology helps bring the world closer together

Beijing 2022 also showcased a series of technological innovations developed to bring more inclusive experiences for fans in multiple locations. Alibaba introduced Cloud ME, a cloud-powered realistic projection that facilitates remote social interactions. The technology defies distances by enabling people to meet and converse with each other’s life-sized, true-to-life persona projections.

In addition, Alibaba unveiled Dong Dong, a 22-year-old virtual influencer. Originating from Beijing, Dong Dong was created to interact with fans globally, sharing fun and informative Olympic-related facts. Speaking in a natural-sounding human voice, she can convey a range of emotions. This has proven to be particularly efficient for engaging with the younger audience. From February 4 to 20, Dong Dong’s livestreaming has been viewed by more than 2 million viewers with a fan base of more than 100,000.

To deliver the best Olympics content to a global audience, Alibaba’s cloud computing technology also powers the Olympic Channel Services, which brings high quality programs to fans around the world to engage with the Olympic Movement anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

Sustainable innovations for the future of Olympics

For the first time the distribution of live signals of the Olympic Games over the cloud has been implemented, providing Rights Holding Broadcasters (RHBs) with agile and cost-effective options. Through the Olympic Winter Games, 6,000 hours of footage were produced by the OBS and broadcasted to more than 220 countries and territories.

The OBS Video Server, which was fully hosted in the cloud, provides RHBs with efficient and scalable system while reducing onsite hardware investment. With Content+, RHBs could access all content produced during the Olympic Winter Games, including the live coverages, remotely with ease. The implementation of OBS Live Cloud also provides an alternative to heavy investment for RHBs and the host cities, when the Olympic Games related contents can be transmitted over the public cloud, effectively reducing the carbon footprint of broadcasting related operations.

In addition, OBS also leveraged multi-camera replay videos with Alibaba, providing replays of competition highlights for curling and speed skating within seconds, bringing engaging and dynamic viewing experiences to audience around the world via RHBs on the cloud.

Ilario Corna, Chief Information Technology Officer, IOC said, “Beijing 2022 should champion innovation as well as sporting success. I am thrilled to see that the cloud-based technology in action at the Olympic Winter Games not only benefits athletes, fans and operating staff, but also helps us to honor our ambition to ensure the Olympic Games are at the forefront of sustainability.”

By analyzing millions of public papers and patent filings over the past three years and conducting interviews with nearly 100 scientists, DAMO provides the top 10 technology trends for the next two to five years that we are expected to witness accelerated breakthroughs and make impacts across sectors in the economy and the society at large.

“Over the past century, the evolution of digital technologies has accelerated technological progress and industrial development. The boundary of technologies is extended from the physical world to mixed reality, while more and more cutting-edge technologies find their way to industrial applications,” said Jeff Zhang, Head of Alibaba DAMO Academy.

“Digital technology plays an important role in powering a green and sustainable future, whether it is applied in industries such as green data centers and energy-efficient manufacturing, or in day-to-day activities like paperless offices. With technology, we will create a better future.”

In the next two years, we expect to see a surge of applications running on top of the new computing system:

#1 Cloud-Network-Device Convergence:

The rapid development of new network technologies will fuel the evolution of cloud computing towards a new computing system: cloud-network-device convergence. In this new system, clouds, networks, and devices have a more clearly defined division of labor. Cloud-network-device convergence is the catalyst that will drive the emergence of new applications to fulfill more demanding tasks, such as high-precision industrial simulation, real-time industrial quality inspection, and mixed reality. In the next 2 years, we expect to see a surge of applications running on top of the new computing system.

In the next three years, we expect to see AI broadly applied in the research process of applied science, the widespread use of silicon photonic chips in large-scale data centers, AI paving the way for integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid, people-centric precision medicine becoming a major trend, groundbreaking improvements in the performance and interpretability of privacy-preserving computation, as well as a new generation of XR glasses:

#2 AI for Science

In the past hundreds of years, the scientific community had two basic paradigms: experimental science and theoretical science. Today, the advancement of AI is making new scientific paradigms possible. Machine learning can process massive amounts of multidimensional and multimodal data and solve complex scientific problems, allowing scientific exploration to flourish in areas previously thought impossible. AI will not only accelerate the speed of scientific research, but also help discover new scientific laws. In the next 3 years, we expect that AI will be broadly applied in the research process of applied science and be used as a production tool in some basic sciences.

#3 Silicon Photonic Chips:

As the size of transistors approaches physical limits, the speed of electronic chip development can no longer meet the increasing data throughput demand brought by the rise of high-performance computing. Unlike electronic chips, silicon photonic chips use photons instead of electrons to transmit data. Photons do not directly interact with each other and can travel longer distances, and therefore silicon photonic chips can provide higher computing density and energy efficiency. The rise of cloud computing and AI drives the rapid development of silicon photonics technology. In the next 3 years, we can expect to see the widespread use of silicon photonic chips in high-speed data transmission in large-scale data centers.

#4 AI for Renewable Energy:

The rapid development of technology in renewable energy such as wind and solar power in recent years has made renewables a tempting energy source to add to the power grid. However, issues such as difficulty in grid integration, low energy utilization rate, and storage of excess energy are major roadblocks along the way. Due to the unpredictable natures of renewable energy power generation, integrating renewable energy sources into the power grid presents challenges that affect the safety and reliability of the grid. The application of AI in the industry is pivotal in improving the efficiency and automation of electric power systems, maximizing resource usage and stability. This will be conducive to achieving carbon neutrality. In the next 3 years, AI is expected to pave the way for integration of renewable energy sources into the power grid and contribute to the safe, efficient, and reliable operation of the power grid.

#5 High-precision Medicine:

Medicine is a field that is highly dependent on individual expertise, often involves a lot of trial and error, and may ultimately have varying efficacies from patient to patient. The convergence of AI and precision medicine is expected to boost the integration of expertise and new auxiliary diagnostic technologies and serve as a high-precision compass for clinical medicine. With this compass, doctors can diagnose diseases and make medical decisions as quickly and accurately as possible. These advances will allow us to quantify, compute, predict, and prevent severe diseases. In the next 3 years, we expect to see people-centric precision medicine become a major trend that will span multiple fields of healthcare, including disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. AI will become synonymous with a highly precise compass that allows us to pinpoint diseases and their treatments.

#6 Privacy-preserving Computation:

For a long time, the application of privacy-preserving computation has been limited to a narrow scope of small-scale computation due to performance bottlenecks, lack of confidence in the technology, and standardization issues. However, as more and more integrated technologies, such as dedicated chips, cryptographic algorithms, whitebox implementation, and data trusts, are emerging, privacy-preserving computation will be adopted in scenarios such as processing massive amounts of data and integrating data from all domains, which is the headway made from processing small amounts of data and data from private domains. The adoption will boost new productivity that is powered by data from all domains. In the next 3 years, we will witness groundbreaking improvements in the performance and interpretability of privacy-preserving computation, and witness the emergence of data trust entities that provide data sharing services based on the technology.

#7 Extended Reality (XR):

The development of technologies such as cloud-edge computing, network communications, and digital twins brings XR into full bloom. XR glasses promise to make immersive mixed reality Internet a reality. This technology plants the seed that will sprout into a new industrial ecosystem that encompasses electronic components, devices, operating systems, and applications. XR will reshape digital applications and revolutionize the way people interact with technology in scenarios such as entertainment, social networking, office, shopping, education, and healthcare. In the next 3 years, we expect to see a new generation of XR glasses that have an indistinguishable look and feel from ordinary glasses entering the market and serving as a key entry point to the next generation of Internet.

In the next five years, we expect to see perceptive soft robotics replacing conventional robots in the manufacturing industry, and satellites and terrestrial systems working as computing nodes providing ubiquitous connectivity:

#8 Perceptive Soft Robotics:

Unlike conventional robots, perceptive soft robots are robots with physically flexible bodies and enhanced perceptibility towards pressure, vision, and sound. These robots take advantage of state-of-the-art technologies such as flexible electronics, pressure adaptive materials, and AI, which allow them to perform highly specialized and complex tasks and deform to adapt to different physical environments. The emergence of perceptive soft robotics will change the course of the manufacturing industry, from the mass-production of standardized products towards specialized, small-batch products. In the next 5 years, perceptive soft robotics will replace conventional robots in the manufacturing industry and pave the way for wider adoption of service robots in our daily life.

#9 Satellite-terrestrial Integrated Computing:

Terrestrial networks and computing systems provide digital services for densely populated areas, while no service is available in sparsely inhabited areas such as deserts, seas, and space. STC connects high-Earth orbit (HEO) and low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and terrestrial mobile communications networks, achieving seamless and multidimensional coverage. STC also creates a computing system that integrates satellites, satellite networks, terrestrial communications systems, and cloud computing technologies. This way, digital services can be more accessible and inclusive across the globe. In the next 5 years, satellites and terrestrial systems will work as computing nodes to constitute an integrated network system providing ubiquitous connectivity.

And beyond, we expect to see the future AI is shifting to the co-evolution of large- and small-scale models via clouds, edges, and devices:

#10 Co-evolution of Large- and Small-scale AI Models:

The large-scale pre-training models, also known as the foundation models, are the grounding breakthrough technique from weak AI to general AI, which relatively boosts performance of various applications using conventional deep learning. However, the merit in the higher performance and the drawback in the power consumption are not well balanced, limiting the exploration of large-scale models. The future AI is shifting from the race on the scalability of foundation models to the co-evolution of large- and small-scale models via clouds, edges, and devices, which is more useful in practice.

For more detailed information, please visit the full report here: https://damo.alibaba.com/techtrends/2022?lang=en

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has been recognized as a Challenger among global security service providers evaluated in the newly released 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls. This marks the first time that Gartner has recognized Alibaba Cloud as a Challenger in the field of network firewalls.

Alibaba Cloud’s placement in this report is based on Gartner evaluation of its Ability to Execute and its Completeness of Vision among 19 global security service providers.

Alibaba Cloud believes the move acknowledges its firewall offering, extensive customer base and significant market shares.

“Network security has been one of our key focus areas in recent years and we have established a designated Security and Compliance Center to oversee the research and development of new solutions and the delivery of end-to-end security services to our customers. We are pleased to see that these efforts are being recognized by customers globally,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.“As the operating practices and working dynamics of enterprises have evolved since the outbreak of the pandemic, the demand for network security solutions has grown significantly. We hope our network firewall and other solutions will continue to help customers of all sizes grow and move their businesses forward.”

Global companies across the retail, finance, and automotive sectors have adopted Alibaba Cloud’s network security solutions, which offer bidirectional controls (both egress and ingress) for securing networks and allow unique identification for different departments while retaining overall control through a central executive network. 

Earlier this year, Alibaba Group ranked third in the global market and first in the Asia Pacific region in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) segment basis market share for the third consecutive year(2018-2020) in Gartner Market Share: IT Services, Worldwide 2020 report. Alibaba Cloud was also named a Visionary in this year’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services and a Leader in 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems.

To learn more about Alibaba Cloud’s firewall, please visit this page.

To view the Gartner report, please click on this link.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls, Rajpreet Kaur, Jeremy D’Hoinne, Nat Smith, Adam Hils, 1 November 2021

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services, Raj Bala, Bob Gill, Dennis Smith, Kevin Ji, David Wright, 27 July 2021

Gartner, Market Share: IT Services, Worldwide 2020, Dean Blackmore, Cathy Tornbohm,etc, 8 April 2021

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, Donald Feinberg, Merv Adrian, Rick Greenwald, Adam Ronthal, Henry Cook, 23 November 2020

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Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today unveiled a new in-house processor design for use in its data centers. The server chips, named Yitian 710, are custom-built by Alibaba Group’s chip development business, T-Head. Powered by these chips, Alibaba Cloud also announced the development of its proprietary servers, called Panjiu. The combination is set to enhance the company’s leading cloud services by optimizing computing performance and energy efficiency. 

“Customizing our own server chips is consistent with our ongoing efforts toward boosting our computing capabilities with better performance and improved energy efficiency,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and Head of Alibaba DAMO Academy during the Apsara Conference, Alibaba’s annual technology flagship event. “We plan to use the chips to support current and future businesses across the Alibaba Group ecosystem. We will also offer our clients next-generation computing services powered by the new chip-powered servers in the near future.”

“Together with our global partners including Intel, Nvidia, AMD and Arm, we will continue to innovate our compute infrastructure and offer diverse computing services for our global customers.” Zhang added.

Built upon advanced 5nm process technology, Yitian 710 is powered by 128 Arm cores with 3.2GHz top clock speed to deliver exceptional performance and excellent energy efficiency. Each processor chip has 60 billion integrated transistors. Yitian 710 is the first server processor that is compatible with the latest Armv9 architecture and includes 8 DDR5 channels and 96-lane PCIe 5.0, providing high memory and I/O bandwidth.

Yitian 710 achieved a score of 440 in SPECint2017 (a standard benchmark to measure CPU integer processing power), surpassing that of the current state-of-the-art Arm server processor by 20% in performance and 50% in energy efficiency.

Panjiu was developed for the next-generation of cloud-native infrastructure. By separating computing from storage, the servers are optimized for both general-purpose and specialized AI computing, as well as high-performance storage. With a modular design approach for large-scale data center deployment, these servers are expected to deliver exceptional economic value for a wide variety of cloud-native workloads, such as containerized applications and computed optimized workloads.

The Alibaba Yitian 710 Cloud Server Chip

Furthering open-source initiatives

During the same keynote, Alibaba also announced that it will open the source code of the XuanTie IP core series, among other upcoming cores. The XuanTie series are Alibaba’s custom-built processors based on RISC-V instruction-set architecture. Developers can now access the source code of the XuanTie series IP cores on Github and Open Chip Community to build prototype chips of their own, which can be customized for IoT applications such as networking, gateway and edge servers. In addition, XuanTie-related software stacks, which support multiple operating systems, including Linux, Android, RTOS and Alibaba’s own AliOS, will also be opened. Alibaba will provide more services and support for development tools, SDKs and customized cores in the future.

“By opening up the IP cores of our in-house IoT processors as well as related software stacks and development tools, we aim to assist global developers to build their own RISC-V-based chips in a much more cost-effective way,” Zhang added. “We hope this move can encourage more innovation among the thriving RISC-V software community, and as a result help people enjoy the benefits of a connected world in the digital era.”

“Alibaba supports the RISC-V community through their continuous contributions, technical leadership, and deep collaboration with RISC-V stakeholders,” said Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International. “Alibaba leads by example and has inspired the global RISC-V community to increase innovation in chip development with benefits to the entire RISC-V ecosystem.”

Alibaba released its first AI inference chip Hanguang 800 in 2019. The AI chip has been deployed in Alibaba Cloud’s data centers to power businesses in areas such as search, recommendation and live streaming.