Today Alibaba Cloud launched eight products ranging from big data and artificial intelligence (AI) to infrastructure, security and private cloud solutions at the Mobile World Congress that is taking place in Barcelona Spain. The array of products will meet the surging demand for powerful and reliable cloud computing services as well as advanced AI solutions among European enterprises.
The new products being launched for European enterprises fall into a number of inter-related categories. In relation to data technology and AI, Alibaba Cloud is launching three key products – Image Search solutions, which allow users to search for information online and offline using images; Intelligent Services Robot, a chatbot for business; and Dataphin, an intelligent data engine developed to cope with the cross-industry big data development, management and application needs.
Infrastructure and security will continue to be crucial as the foundation and fundamental consideration for enterprises undertaking cloud migration. In view of this, Alibaba Cloud will launch ECS Baremetal Instance, a new high performance computing solution of ECS that combines the strengths of virtualized systems and bare metal servers. When connected as a supercomputer, ECS Baremetal Instances becomes a Super Computing Cluster that will reduce network latency to the level of micro-seconds while offering elasticity and supercomputing capabilities.
The company will also introduce its next generation intelligent Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) and Vulnerability Discovery Service, a high-performing security solution. For European enterprises that are looking for a scalable and hybrid cloud services platform, Alibaba Cloud will launch the international version of Apsara Stack, which has a three-year proven track record of market use in China and has been successfully adopted by more than 120 enterprise customers.
These new products, for the first time in Europe, bring Alibaba Cloud’s advanced big data and AI capabilities enabled by super computing power. The sophisticated data intelligence solutions already have many successful stories both in China and globally providing proof of concept. Image Search is widely applied in a number of scenarios in China including New Retail, a concept that seamlessly converges online and offline retail. The intelligent service robot served more than 40 million customers in a single day during last year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. Dataphin, the system for intelligent data creation and management, is now managing 95% of the entire Alibaba Group’s data and driving all types of data intelligence innovations within the group’s business ecosystem from retail to finance, logistics, transport and health.
To ensure the company’s ability to evolve and expand its products and services to meet customers’ needs in the digital era, Alibaba Cloud is committed to investing in cloud computing services and digital infrastructure in Europe. It opened its first availability zone in Frankfurt Germany in November 2016 and recently commenced operation of the second availability zone in the same region. To better serve its customers in Europe, Alibaba Cloud is establishing a technology ecosystem with European partners, such as Vodafone in Germany, the Met Office which is the national meteorological service for the UK, and Station F, an innovation hub in France.
