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Alibaba: The Giant of e-Commerce

Announcement comes a day before a four-day state visit to Britain by Chinese President Xi Jinping

David Cameron has appointed Alibaba founder Jack Ma to advise him on business.

The announcement came the day before a four-day state visit to Britain by Chinese President Xi Jinping and as Britain seeks to boost its business ties with the world's second-largest economy.

Mr Cameron's spokeswoman told reporters that Mr Ma, currently executive chairman of the Alibaba Group, would be joining the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Group.

The e-commerce boss will "provide particular help and advice on how to get small and medium-sized British businesses boosting their exports and in particular accessing Chinese markets through platforms like Alibaba", she said.

Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne believe that close ties with China are vital to cementing Britain's economic growth in decades to come.

But human rights activists accuse the Government of kowtowing to China and the state visit is expected to be accompanied by protests.

Mr Cameron's Business Advisory Group had 19 members in July - most of them chief executives of top British companies, including the heads of BP, easyJet and Rolls-Royce.

Membership is not remunerated.

David Cameron hires Alibaba founder Jack Ma to advise him on business - Telegraph
 
Cade Metz Business Date of Publication: 11.06.15.
11.06.15
Time of Publication: 7:00 am.
7:00 am

China’s Alibaba Just Beat the US in a Global Machine Battle
Each year, Jim Gray held a battle of the machines.

This was a battle of speed and time and energy, and it involved some of the top minds in the world of hardcore computer science. Who could build a system that could analyze the most data in 60 seconds? Who could sort 100 terabytes the quickest? Who could sort 100 terabytes—aka 100,000 gigabytes—using the least amount of electricity?

Gray—the legendary computer scientist who won the Turing Award for his work with computer databases—was lost at sea in 2007, mourned across the computer science community and beyond. But in the years since, others have continued his battle of the machines. Today, as we move so rapidly into the age of cloud computing, this competition doesn’t just pit one machine against another. It pits an army of machines against so many other armies.

In recent years, researchers at Microsoft—where Gray was working when he died—have topped several of these contests. Last year, a top prize went to a team that includes one of the top engineers at Google. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have also fared well. But this year, there was a new winner: Alicloud, which sorted 100 terabytes of data in a mere six-and‐a-half minutes, abusing the previous record of 23-and-a-half minutes.

Alicloud, or Aliyun, is the cloud computing arm of Chinese tech giant Alibaba. It’s analogous to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure or the Google Cloud Platform. It serves up a sweeping set of online services where any company or independent coder can build and run websites, smartphone apps, and virtually any other software—without setting up hardware in their own data center.

Such “public cloud” services represent the future of information technology. A new report from research outfit Forrester deems the public cloud a “hyper-growth market,” predicting that this market will grow to $191 billion by 2020. Here in the States, Amazon is the king of cloud computing, with revenues of about $6 billion a year, and the two big challengers are Microsoft and Google. But these are hardly the only players. A New York-based upstart called Digital Ocean is challenging the big names, and Alicloud is very much on the rise in China.

The company’s recent victory on the GraySort benchmark—where systems compete to sort 100 terabytes in the shortest amount of time—is merely a sideshow in its larger evolution. But the win shows that Alicloud has the engineers and the desire and, well, the hardware to compete in this rapidly growing market. Alicloud is following in the footsteps of Amazon and Microsoft and Google, and at least in China, it’s intent on eclipsing these American giants.

Amazon and Microsoft offer their own cloud computing services in China, serving them up through local partners, due to local government restrictions. But as Alicloud chief architect Hong Tang will tell you, his company is the market’s dominant player.

According to Tang, the company’s infrastructure spans “hundreds of thousands” of machines. It serves about 1.8 million customers. And the company’s revenues now top $100 million a year. He acknowledges that this is small compared to Amazon’s overall numbers. But judging from independent data compiled by the UK-based research outfit Netcraft, Alicloud is growing at a remarkable rate. According to Netcraft, it now houses more public websites than all but three other operations on earth—and more than any other outfit in China. Microsoft claims a total of about 50,000 Azure customers in the country.

Google’s Chinese Twin
Alicloud didn’t just top the GraySort competition. It also took the gold in the MinuteSort, organizing 7.7 terabytes of data in the allotted 60 seconds. It did both using a data-crunching program it calls FuxiSort. Tang and his team built this tool from scratch, in the C++ programming language. It’s (roughly) analogous to Hadoop, the open source standard for crunching data across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of machines.

But, says George Porter, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, San Diego, who has reviewed Alicloud’s public paper on FuxiSort, the software is designed to use computing power more efficiently, to use available hardware to the fullest. According to Porter, FuxiSort seems to operate much like TritonSort, a platform he developed alongside Googlers Michael Conley and Amin Vahdat, the man who oversees Google’s worldwide computer network. TritonSort topped the GraySort competition last year, alongside a system based on an open source tool called Spark.

Porter points out, however, that FuxiSort took the prize this year in part because it used so many more machines than TritonSort (about 3,100 processors versus only 186 processors). “They were 3.6 times faster than we were,” Porter says. “But they used almost 17 times more servers.” He says that he and his team only had access to so many of highest power machines on Amazon’s cloud service, whereas Alicloud could draw on a much larger number of high-powered machines via its own cloud service.

In other words, Alicloud has not just the software but the hardware needed to compete in the larger market. And that’s the larger point. It’s not in the business of winning benchmark competitions. It’s in the business of selling access to computing power and online software.

With this in mind, could something like FuxiSort prove useful in the marketplace? Perhaps. According to Porter, it’s particularly well suited to crunching data across a relatively small number of machines. This could help small organizations with small pockets. “There’s a lot of people that want to do Big Data processing on a smaller scale,” Porter says. “It would be great if they had access to this Big Data computing but with much fewer resources. It would democratize [the technology], make it available to a much larger group of people.”

The Chinese-American
Even Hong Tang will tell you that Alicloud is imitating the American cloud giants. “We’ve built a very general, large scale cloud computing infrastructure,” he says, “very similar to Google’s infrastructure.” The Google infrastructure, you see, is the ideal all other cloud companies aspire to. But it was Amazon who created the cloud market in realizing it should offer its infrastructure to the rest of world via the Internet. And when Alicloud launched its own cloud service back in 2011, it was really imitating Jeff Bezos and company.

Like Amazon and Google and Microsoft, Alicloud offers raw computing power and data storage space as well as a wide range of pre-built software, including data analysis tools akin to FuxiSort. These services are a way for companies to run their businesses without having to built too much infrastructure on their own.

Tang studied at the University of California Santa Barbara and later worked at Yahoo, whose role in the rise of cloud computing is under-appreciated. “Yahoo’s has been really innovative in the Big Data space,” says Porter. “Not only have they built some interesting products. They’ve been really active in creating communities around those products.” Now, under Tang’s leadership, Alicloud is very much a part of that same movement, alongside Amazon and Google and Microsoft as well as Yahoo. It has a GraySort trophy to prove it.


China's Alibaba Just Beat the US in a Global Machine Battle | WIRED
 
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Alibaba releases Quantum Cryptography Communication product: China's Internet enters the quantum era
Updated:2015/10/20 09:55

Aliyun and Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly released the Quantum Cryptography Communication product at the 2015 Computing Conference. The Quantum Cryptography Communication is the most secure form of communication encryption, which indicates China’s Internet has entered into the quantum era. It is the first cloud service provider that provides quantum secure transmission product service. The release of the result will be a milestone for the global quantum research and the development of cloud computing.

Dr. Jian Wang£¬Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Group, said that Quantum Cryptography Communication is far more than a brand-new encryption, and it will be the key technology of solutions for the new generation of network information security, keeping the Internet more secure in the next 50 years. At the present stage, the combination of the cloud service and quantum encryption technology is the only way of generally applying the expensive technology to the business situations, which makes the whole society enjoy the benefits brought by the quantum revolution.

Quantum communication is the most secure communication way at present

Currently,the industry generally believes that next information revolution promoted by the quantum physics will bring us to an incredible world. The scientists make the dream of changing the world with the quantum information technology gradually come true. With the rapid development of human’s computing power, the deciphered risk of the classic cryptographic communication is increasing by the day.

Once the genuine universal quantum computer comes into being, it will run trillion times faster than the most advanced supercomputer at the moment. The quantum communication technology is the only secure communication way that has been proved security strictly, and it can ensure the security of the data despite of the appearance of the quantum computer. The quantum cryptography transmission unconditionally ensure the security of the data through the quantum key and all of the information intercepting, cryptanalysis and hacker technologies during the transmission will be helpless.

Alibaba takes its business to the domain of Quantum Security

Aliyun and Chinese Academy of Sciences have established several Quantum Portals in the network environment of Aliyun and unconditional secure data transmission service can be provided to the clients by implementing the networking of data centers in local through Quantum Portals.

It is revealed that Aliyun has completed the small-scale test on its quantum communication product by using its business and achieved the features of approaching, maintaining secrecy, networking and key distributing. Adaptable business will be officially taken to the domain of quantum secure and this will be verificated in a large scale this year, and Aliyun will get preparation for launching service at the same time.

Source:c114
 
alibaba has a lot of money, they should create space compay like amazon's blue origin and spacex. they can start off using the new chinese quick launch rocket, Naga-L, for small payload, then later on with rockets based on RD-180 for heavy payload. all those can be bought off the shelf. no need to start from scratch :D
 
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Alibaba 'planning' major foray into HK media, entertainment
November 9, 2015

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Alibaba may be set to make a major foray into the media and entertainment industries. [File photo/Xinhua]


Alibaba may be set to make a major foray into the media and entertainment industries.

After announcing on Friday it was taking over China's top online video provider in a cash deal, rumors surfaced over the weekend that the mainland-based company is "in discussions" to invest in Hong Kong-based SMCP Group Ltd, which publishes the English-language newspaper South China Morning Post.

On Sunday, a spokesman for Alibaba told China Daily the company does not comment on market rumors. The communications department at SCMP Group did not respond to an inquiry.

The rumor surfaced after SMCP announced on Friday that Wang Xiangwei, the newspaper's editor-in-chief, was stepping down and Tammy Tam, Wang's No 2 since 2012, would take over from Jan 1.

Meanwhile, Shanghai-based mobile news app The Paper reported that Alibaba is in talks to take a stake in Sina Corp, which runs online news portal sina.com.cn and Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Industry observers said that since June, Alibaba has poured billions of dollars into media organizations, including online video giant Youku Tudou Inc.

Tian Hou, an analyst at TH Capital in Beijing, said Alibaba's media expansion is "very likely". Huang Guofeng, an analyst at the Internet consultancy Analysys International in Beijing, said Alibaba may have a "big vision to enter people's living rooms".
 
Alibaba Said to Be Discussing $80 Million Investment in Boxed

November 6, 2015 — 9:16 AM CST

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is said to be in talks to invest as much as $80 million in the grocery ordering smartphone app Boxed Wholesale, according to people with knowledge of the matter, signaling that the Chinese Internet giant wants to expand its reach on Amazon.com Inc.’s home turf.

Founded in 2013 by CEO Chieh Huang, Boxed is a hybrid of Amazon and Costco Wholesale Corp., offering free delivery within three days on bulk grocery orders of at least $50 made through the company’s smartphone app. Shoppers can find a 76.5-ounce box of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran for $7.99, 30 rolls of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper for $22.39 and 140 kitchen garbage bags for $14.19.

Boxed, based in New York City, has no membership fee, distinguishing it from Amazon’s $99 annual Prime membership, which includes delivery discounts and online video and music streaming. Costco charges $55 annually for access to its warehouses stocked with groceries in bulk sizes.


The investment would be Alibaba’s second effort to compete with Amazon in the U.S. e-commerce market without starting its own brand. Alibaba invested in Hoboken, New Jersey-based startup Jet.com Inc., which is also challenging Amazon’s e-commerce model by offering free delivery of household goods without requiring a membership.

The talks may not lead to a deal with Boxed and Alibaba’s investment could be limited to considerably less than $80 million, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are still private. Boxed spokesman David Taft didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Outside China
Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma is looking to boost the company’s revenue outside China, but a recent push in the U.S. fell flat. In June, Alibaba said it would sell its U.S. website 11 Main, a boutique online marketplace that sought to replicate a Main Street niche-store shopping experience by featuring smaller merchants with unique goods. Some merchants on the site said shoppers never materialized.

Jet and Boxed would shift Alibaba’s U.S. focus to common household goods that save shoppers a trip to the store rather than giving them a sense of discovery. Big companies and startups alike are taking a fresh stab at delivering groceries ordered online, a $10.9 billion industry in the U.S. that is expected to grow 9.6 percent annually through 2019, according to a December report by IbisWorld.


Seattle-based Amazon also is pushing into the grocery market by offering free same-day delivery to Prime members in 20 metropolitan areas. Target Corp. in Septemberunveiled a partnership with delivery startup Instacart Inc. to offer same-day delivery of groceries in Minneapolis for $3.99 per order.

Boxed in January announced a $25 million funding round led by GGV Capital. Boxed CEO Huang in 2011 sold his gaming studio Astro Ape to Zynga, where he remained for two years as a director before starting Boxed, according to his LinkedIn profile.
 
Will this be a step to affect Hong Kong's general view to become pro-mainland China/pro-Beijing long-term?
hard to say. The Hk people I know are anti China because they hate it when others wield economic power. I remember in the 90s when so many cocky HK students in school who think their shit smell better than roses. Now its mainlanders who think their shit smell better than roses

:partay:
 
Will this be a step to affect Hong Kong's general view to become pro-mainland China/pro-Beijing long-term?

Incrementally, it will.

That's the ultimate goal. In that regard, establishing a state-friendly corporate media at least half as powerful as the US media is very important.

As China's home business has more money to invest, they will foray into media and this will be the backbone of the middle class that watch the mainstream media.
 
Chinese companies should buy up all the media in HK and install pro-China journalists.

China must use its wealth and power to benefit itself.

Exactly. Just like US media, which, when necessary, can market two military interventions within two years. I do not wish to see Chinese media to be warmonger, but it must have the capability and perfect alignment with ultimate state interests.
 
Obama talks business with Alibaba’s Ma
Source: Agencies | November 19, 2015, Thursday |

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US President Barack Obama talks with Alibaba’s Jack Ma. — AFP

UNITED States President Barack Obama yesterday took time out from an Asia-Pacific summit for an unusual task — putting questions to Chinese Internet billionaire Jack Ma and a young Filipina entrepreneur on government-business ties in a panel discussion.

Obama joked comfortably with the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which is looking to make inroads into foreign markets, including the US.

During the discussion on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Obama probed Ma on how he thought government and established businesses could help young entrepreneurs.

“Government is simple — just reduce the tax, or no tax, for these guys,” Ma said, to a wave of laughter and applause from the audience of executives.

“You got a lot of cheers from your fellow CEOs,” Obama quipped in response.

Ma’s remarks came as Alibaba is working to invest heavily in ventures abroad. Executives have said its push beyond the China market is a top priority, as the company works to maintain its rapid growth even as the prospect of e-commerce saturation at home looms large.

Alibaba has said some of its larger overseas markets include Brazil and Russia.

Obama also praised the relatively unknown Filipina entrepreneur, Aisa Mijeno, a professor of engineering who invented a lamp powered by salt water. He suggested that Ma should invest in the company of his fellow panelist after she said she was looking for funding to mass-produce the lamps.

“I’m just saying,” Obama said, throwing Ma a suggestive look.

Ma said Alibaba has invested 0.3 percent of its revenue for the past six years in encouraging young people to find solutions to climate change and other environmental issues, adding that he thinks it is a “fantastic idea” to invest in clean technology, referring to a recent conversation in which Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates broached the idea.
 
Alibaba announces SCMP acquisition
By Xiao Xie Source:Global Times Published: 2015-12-12 0:58:01


Alibaba Group, China's largest online retailer, announced on Friday that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the South China Morning Post (SCMP), one of Hong Kong's largest newspapers, and other media assets of SCMP Group.

According to an announcement published on Alibaba's website on Friday, the agreement combines the "heritage and editorial excellence of the SCMP with Alibaba's digital expertise to provide comprehensive and insightful news and analysis of the big stories in Hong Kong and Chinese mainland."

Talking about Alibaba's vision for the SCMP, Joseph Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, said in the announcement that the company will eliminate "the paywall" on the scmp.com to allow free access to its content some time after the takeover.

Some have suggested that ownership by Alibaba will compromise the SCMP's editorial independence, which reflects a bias of its own, Tsai said in a letter to SCMP readers.

"These day-to-day editorial decisions will be driven by editors in the newsroom, not in the corporate boardroom," Tsai remarked.

Apart from the flagship South China Morning Post newspaper, the agreement also includes the acquisition of the magazine, recruitment, outdoor media and digital media businesses of the SCMP.

Liu Dingding, an analyst from Beijing-based Internet intelligence agency Sootoo, told the Global Times on Friday that one of Alibaba's strategies in recent years has been to develop a comprehensive "media network" including newspapers, movies and other entertainment industries. He said media outlet sina.com could be its next target.

***

Mr. Ma Yun is a great patriot of China and this is a very critical investment. Great news to close the year.
 

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