Cloud-native intelligence products accelerate customers’ digital
transformation
Alibaba Cloud, the digital technologies and intelligence
backbone of Alibaba Group, today unveiled a series of innovative
products at its 12th annual Apsara Conference, highlighting the
technology pioneer’s commitment in helping people adapt to the more
digitized world and accelerate customers’ digital transformation
during and after the pandemic.
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the full release here:
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Alibaba Debuts First Cloud Computer
(Photo: Business Wire)
A highlight is Alibaba Cloud’s first cloud computer, a
palm-sized personal computer which, despite being just about 60
grams and as light as an egg, offers high-performance computing,
thanks to robust back-end cloud resources. By simply
connecting the cloud computer with a normal computer screen, a user
can access almost unlimited computing resources anytime, anywhere,
while paying on a subscription model or for the actual cloud
consumption.
“We hope our cloud computer can help people access resilient
computing power whenever they need to, so they can conduct complex
tasks which usually require sophisticated and powerful PCs, such as
video editing, animation rendering, software development, and
online customer services, with a tiny personal computer at hand
now,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud
Intelligence. “As working from home becomes the new normal
during and after the pandemic, we believe our innovation can also
help users more easily enjoy the benefits of cloud computing
anytime, anywhere, in a cost-effective yet secure way.”
With robust computing power, the cloud computer can reduce the
rendering time of one frame high-resolution animation from 90
minutes using a traditional PC, down to only 10 minutes. In
addition, the cloud computer’s system upgrades are conducted
online, saving a big chunk of the normally heavy cost of PC machine
upgrades and maintenance in traditional office settings. Through
Alibaba Cloud's self-developed app-streaming protocol, which is
designed for synergy between the cloud and the device, users can
also purchase and access licensed apps and programs such Linux and
Windows as well as various office applications. All user data will
be stored on cloud for datacenter-grade security and protection
measures. Available initially for enterprise customers, the cloud
computers will be also available for purchase by individual
consumers in the near future.
Alibaba Cloud also unveiled its autonomous logistics robot
for last-mile deliveries. Developed by the Alibaba DAMO
Academy, the global research initiative by Alibaba Group, the
delivery robot can carry 50 packages at one time and cover 62 miles
(or 100 kilometres) on a single charge. It is estimated the mobile
robot should be able to deliver as many as 500 packages a day to
one designated community or campus, meeting the rising demand for
speedy last-mile delivery in China. Online shopping is booming
there, with 200 million packages delivered daily and expectations
that will rise to 1 billion packages per day in the coming
years.
“We are expecting a rapid spike of delivery demands brought by
the thriving New Retail and local services businesses in the
increasingly digitalized world,” added Zhang. “To meet the strong
delivery demand for our internal business growth and for the larger
society, we have been investing in smart logistics, including
logistics robots, for years. We are glad to launch our latest
mobile delivery robot, which will support Cainiao, Alibaba’s
logistics platform, to serve communities, campuses and business
parks in China. “
“Moving ahead, we aim to support the delivery needs of our local
services businesses and leverage our technologies for other types
of service robots, such as service robots in the airport and
tourism guide robots in scenic spots.”
Supported with reinforced learning technologies, the intelligent
robot can schedule its route even in a crowded environment. With
proprietary, high-definition positioning technology, the robot can
operate even where there’s weak or no GPS signal. Leveraging a
self-developed heterogeneous computing platform, 3D Point Cloud
Semantic Segmentation (PCSS) technology and deep learning, the
robot can also identify obstacles and predict the intended movement
of passengers and vehicles a few seconds ahead of time to enhance
safety.
Consumers can use either the Cainiao or Taobao mobile apps to
select a preferred timeslot during the day for delivery. The robot
then arrives at the designated destination, where users retrieve
their packages simply by entering a passcode they receive in the
app, once the robot arrives.
A slew of cloud-native products were unveiled during the
Conference:
- Cloud Lakehouse: This is the
next-generation big data architecture which can deliver significant
data-based values and intelligence through cross-platform
computing, intelligent cache, hot/cold data separation, storage
improvement and performance acceleration.
- Sandboxed-Container 2.0: Alibaba’s
cloud-native container service for Kubernetes supports clusters
that provide sandboxed container runtimes. The new
Sandboxed-Container 2.0 enables customers to run applications in
lightweight sandboxed environments with faster speeds and reduced
cost of runtime resources.
- PAI-DSW 2.0: The latest Cloud-native
Machine-learning Interactive Development Platform by Alibaba. It
aims to provide an optimal environment for developers that is easy
to use, compatible with community plug-ins and supports
multi-development environments like JupyterLab, WebIDE and
Terminal.
- Lindorm: The cloud-native
multi-model database that is used to support the Alibaba Group
ecosystem, is introduced to benefit the wider Alibaba Cloud
ecosystem. Lindorm is a cloud-native database, with affordable
storage and flexible processing characteristics. It is designed for
applications with massive processing requirements for a mixture of
unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data.
The conference, named “Leap Into the Future of Digital
Intelligence,” was entirely hosted online for the first time, with
over 100 virtual forums on topics ranging from cloud computing, IoT
to machine learning and industrial AI solutions.
For more information about the Apsara Conference, please visit
the website:
https://www.alibabacloud.com/apsara-conference-2020
About Alibaba Cloud
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (alibabacloud.com), the
digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is
among the world’s top three IaaS providers, according to Gartner.
It is also the largest provider of public cloud services in China,
according to IDC. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of
cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, including
merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, start-ups,
corporations and public services. Alibaba Cloud is the official
Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee.
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Media Contact: Crystal Liu Crystal.liu@alibaba-inc.com +86
18578497650
Luica Mak luica.mak@alibaba-inc.com +44-7905471332
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