Alibaba Cloud released a new product, SaaS accelerator with technical capabilities such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality integrated into modules.
Over the past decade, Alibaba Cloud has developed 162 products and activated 4,610 product features and functions, an average of more than one a day. At the summit, the company announced a full suite of new products in China, SaaS accelerator is one of them.
At the 2019 Ali Cloud Summit in Beijing on March 21, Alibaba Cloud released a new product, SaaS accelerator with technical capabilities such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality integrated into modules. ISVs and developers can now quickly build SaaS applications with a simple drag and drop.
Developers can use virtual reality test and experience the products before they are actually manufactured. At the launching site, MA Jin, general manager of Alibaba Clouds Intelligent Product Management Department, gave a simple demonstration. With a SaaS accelerator, it took only five days to develop a smart car purchase application with a virtual test drive and other functions. In the past, building such a smart car purchase application may require a team of dozens of people and a months’ time at a minimum.
Alibaba CTO ZHANG Jianfeng said, "In the future, we will increase investment in research and development and expand the technological advantage of the cloud".
SaaS Accelerator is a highly efficient and agile platform where ecosystem partners can easily build and launch SaaS applications and leverage Alibaba’s proven business and technology. The accelerator helps SaaS customers quickly deploy and test their applications on the cloud, shorten the implementation lifecycle, and accelerate time-to-market. It features an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface and launch kit while remaining highly compatible with other application programming interfaces (APIs). With the accelerator, a smart SaaS application can go live in as little as five days. It integrates with the application, Alibaba's payment, and map. Distributes capabilities into the market through APIs so that partners can not only acquire technology but also gain business capabilities and cooperation.
The key to realizing the scale of SaaS business is to have a stable and powerful platform to provide support, to improve the development efficiency of customization, and the ability of the middle platform to be reused.
Established in 2009, Ali Cloud, the cloud computing and data intelligence arm of Alibaba Group, is among the world’s top three SaaS providers, according to Gartner, and the largest provider of public cloud services in China, according to IDC. Ali Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, start-ups, corporations, and government organizations. Alibaba Cloud is the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee.
Coming back to SaaS accelerator. Launched by Ali Cloud the SaaS accelerator covers three major segments: business center, capability center, and technology center. Developers only need to perform a simple operation by writing very little code and can quickly build a SaaS application to achieve scale and fast replication.
At the same time, with the rich ecology of Alibaba, Developers can quickly complete application release, provide services to target users, and form a complete business closed loop from product development to deployment delivery.
Alibaba Group also unveiled at its Beijing Summit the new strategy to develop the company into a more technologically inclusive platform. ZHANG Jianfeng President of Alibaba Cloud and Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Group, for the first time, elaborated publicly on the strategic upgrade of the business – evolving to serve as a key component of the Alibaba Business Operating System, and empowering customers and ecosystem partners to win in the digital era. Over 3,000 ecosystem partners and industry practitioners attending the Summit have shared the development journey of the company over the past 10 years.