On December 14th, Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily (Reporter Huang Xinyi) confirmed from insiders that Alibaba Cloud's Chief Business Officer, Cai Yinghua, has resigned from Alibaba Cloud. In September, Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. underwent a business change. Cai Yinghua resigned as the legal representative, chairman, and general manager, and Zheng Junfang was added as the legal representative, executive director, and general manager.
At that time, Alibaba Cloud responded that this was a common change in the company's business registration information and did not represent a change in the company's management.
But in November, Alibaba Cloud underwent a series of organizational restructuring, including the establishment of a Public Cloud Business Unit, led by Liu Weiguang, reporting to Alibaba Cloud CEO Wu Yongming; Establish an Infrastructure Business Unit, led by Jiang Jiangwei, and report to Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren; Establish a hybrid cloud business unit. In this adjustment, Cai Yinghua was not mentioned.
At the same time, Alibaba Group has established an Infrastructure Committee. Under the overall management of Wu Yongming, the members include not only Zhou Jingren and Jiang Jiangwei, but also Alibaba CTO Wu Zeming and Zhang Jianfeng, who stepped down from the position of President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group last year and served as the President of the Dharma Institute. This committee will focus on coordinating the planning and construction of the underlying technology infrastructure of the entire group. In the future, there will still be close linkage between various businesses of Alibaba Group and Alibaba Cloud in terms of underlying technology infrastructure.
Another noteworthy point is that during the third quarter financial report conference call, Wu Yongming proposed the "AI driven, public cloud priority" strategy, which will make trade-offs between all Alibaba Cloud products and business models, reduce project-based sales orders, and increase investment in public cloud core products. "Adhering to prioritizing public clouds can enable us to reap economies of scale and technological dividends in the future," said Wu Yongming.
Cai Yinghua, who resigned this time, comes from a senior executive background at Huawei. He previously served as the President of EBG China, promoting Huawei's transformation of its Chinese government enterprise business and leading the construction of distribution channels and partner ecosystems. Therefore, when Cai Yinghua arrived at Alibaba Cloud in March 2022, he was considered a key figure in helping Alibaba Cloud secure key government and enterprise clients.
Nowadays, with Alibaba Cloud's strategy shifting towards public clouds, Cai Yinghua's resignation may seem sudden, but it is reasonable.
For many years, Alibaba Cloud has consistently ranked first in market share in the Chinese public cloud market. But the share has been shrinking in the past two years. According to an IDC report, in the second half of 2022, Alibaba Cloud's market share in the IaaS field decreased from 37.8% in the second half of 2021 to 32.6%. In the first half of 2023, Alibaba Cloud's IaaS market share dropped again to 29.9%.
Compared to private clouds targeting government and enterprise clients, public clouds are standardized products that are easy to deliver and have higher profit margins. For Alibaba Cloud, maintaining a stable domestic market share currently helps to solidify the foundation for future development.
Since the beginning of this year, Alibaba Cloud has continuously carried out significant business adjustments. In March 2023, Alibaba launched its largest organizational restructuring since its establishment, splitting the group into a "1+6+N" structure. Among them, Alibaba Cloud became one of the first businesses to be independently split and listed. Zhang Jianfeng, former CEO of Alibaba Cloud, stepped down and Zhang Yong was appointed as Chairman of Alibaba Group, while also serving as CEO of Alibaba Cloud.
In September, Wu Yongming took over as the CEO of the group and also served as the Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Cloud, while Zhang Yong stepped down. In November, Alibaba announced that it would no longer push for a complete spin off of the Cloud Intelligence Group.
While adjusting personnel and business architecture, Alibaba Cloud also made it to the hot search due to service failures. On the evening of November 12th, Alibaba Cloud experienced a sudden malfunction, affecting almost all APP applications in the Alibaba series. In more than three hours, many people have problems using Taobao, Alipay, Hungry, Free Fish, Nailing and other software.
On December 1st, Alibaba Cloud held a Tongyi Qianwen press conference and announced that Alibaba Cloud Tongyi Qianwen's 72 billion parameter model Qwen-72B is open source. At the same time, Tongyi Qianwen has also opened up the 1.8 billion parameter model Qwen 1.8B and audio large model Qwen Audio. Previously, Cai Chongxin stated at the Yunqi Conference that Alibaba Cloud aims to become the most open cloud in the AI era and will bet on the construction of a large model ecosystem.
Overall, Alibaba Cloud, which has held a leading position in the domestic public cloud industry for many years, is now facing a decline in market share in traditional advantageous areas, as well as the opening of a new track for large models. This has prompted AI and public cloud to become the main battlefields of Alibaba Cloud in the coming years. Ensuring the reliability and stability of infrastructure is the top priority for the stable development of Alibaba Cloud's business.