March 28, 2018 – Alibaba Cloud hosted the computing conference in Shenzhen today, sharing its business developments in Internet of Things (IoT). As the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, Alibaba Cloud established its IoT business unit in April 2017.
The Increasing Importance of IoT
In less than a year, a number of breakthroughs were made including significantly expanding the IoT network coverage, creating the IoT Connectivity Alliance (ICA) with over 200 industry players to promote an open and secure IoT ecosystem; creating AliOS Things, an open-source operating system for IoTs with more than 14,000 developers involved; as well as developing edge computing that complements with Alibaba Cloud's advantages in security, storage, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Simon Hu, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud said:
"Our vision is to build an intelligently connected world through transformative IoT technologies. This requires us to realize the potential of an inclusive and secure IoT infrastructure driven by robust AI solutions and a suite of computing capabilities that extends from cloud to edge. IoT will sit alongside e-commerce, finance, logistics and cloud in its own right and commanding relevant focus and resources, in order to become the new strategic track for Alibaba."
Building a Robust and Global IoT Network
Alibaba Cloud aims to leverage its expertise in cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing to help build an IoT network with 10 billion connected devices within the next five years. To date, Alibaba Cloud's IoT solutions have covered the household, manufacturing, smart city and automobile sectors:
Household
In June last year, Alibaba Cloud Link, an open platform for smart living, was launched to offer connectivity, device management, and data analytics solutions to speed up smart home development in China. Individual appliance manufacturers can link their own products to those of others through this Alibaba Cloud platform.
Manufacturing
Alibaba Cloud's industrial IoT solutions enable manufacturers to aggregate and analyze data from the machines during the production process to implement real-time monitoring and visualization of data, which can in turn optimize energy management, quality control and cost effectiveness.
Smart City
Alibaba Cloud's IoT solution for smart city was launched in October last year. Using this system that combines cloud, edge and terminal computing functions, city administrators can monitor in real-time energy consumption by street lamps, water levels of rivers and the usage of gas pipes to gain insight and allow better management of the city. For example, Alibaba Cloud and Wuxi city jointly established the first IoT town in Hongshan, Wuxi where every "thing" in the town is connected by IoT. The range of data inputs was transmitted to an integrated platform on cloud for effective city management.
Automobile
AliOS, the operating system developed by Alibaba has formed partnerships with SAIC Motor, Dongfeng Peugeot-Citroën Automobile and Ford Motor to drive the smart evolution of the automobile industry. 500,000 AliOS-powered internet cars have been rolled out to the market as of today. At the conference today, AliOS, announced a major partnership with NXP Semiconductors N.V., the world's largest supplier of automotive semiconductors. The partnership (Link to full release) will see AliOS and NXP's automotive infotainment solution installed in millions of vehicles in China by 2020.
Going Beyond IoT
By leveraging IoT technologies, as well as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Alibaba Cloud has successfully innovated a new family of solutions called ET Brain. By harnessing Alibaba Cloud ET Brain's revolutionary technology, enterprises and organizations can unlock new potential to solve complex business and social problems. Alibaba Cloud ET Brain industry-specific solutions include City Brain, Industrial Brain, Medical Brain, Environment Brain, Aviation Brain, and Financial Brain.
To learn more about Alibaba Cloud's IoT initiative and technologies, visit https://www.alibabacloud.com/solutions/IoT.
