Baozun, the Alibaba-backed e-commerce solutions provider, recently announced a new partnership with Datapipe, a leading cloud services provider to offer better server solutions as Baozun’s business rapidly grows.
Founded in 2007 in Shanghai, Baozun expanded into Hong Kong in 2013 and Taiwan in 2014, and was listed on the NASDAQ in 2015. The company offers services ranging from online store operations to digital marketing, customer services, warehousing, and fulfillment services. It helps clients run both official brand sites and flagship stores on platforms such as Tmall and JD.com.
Clients of Baozun include over 100 global brands such as Levis Jeans, Microsoft, Nike, Häagen-Dazs, etc. They cover fields of apparel, appliances, electronics, home and furnishing, food and health, cosmetics, insurance, and automobile, serving millions of customers across fifty countries.
Prior to the cloud migration, Baozun’s data ran on web servers. As business grew, the load on the servers grew accordingly- pushing the company’s IT infrastructure team to work over 200 hours per month simply to maintain the servers.
Additionally, the servers have had to cope with occasions when an online promotion or other factors could drive a massive spike in web traffic. For example, China’s “Singles Day” on November 11 often sees sales volumes increasing by 100 times that of a normal day. Without proper processing management, the servers run the risk of collapsing.
By shifting its IT system to the Cloud, cooperating with Datapipe will allow Baozun to save the 200 hours of server maintenance time every month, reduce the cost of cloud ownership by 20%, reduce the on-boarding time from 25 days to 5 days (so that new clients can more quickly set up shop) and guarantee a 99.95% uptime for its clients.
Datapipe provides IT solutions for security, governance, orchestration, and analytics; it has been in Asia for almost 10 years. With over 2,000 global customers, the company generated a revenue of USD 300 million in 2015, a year on year growth of 26%. It also led the ecommerce transformation of Singapore’s largest electronics retailer, Challenger Technologies, this April.
“Datapipe brought significant expertise in managing cloud environments,” Baozun’s CTO Tony Wu told AllChinaTech. “With Datapipe managing our cloud deployment, Baozun is able to focus on other crucial technology processes, accelerating our growth and delivering shareholder value.”
Colin Chan, Datapipe VP of Asia, said that by moving Baozun’s core workload to a 100% scalable cloud environment, and managing their infrastructure 24/7, Baozun is better positioned to take a bite of the multi-trillion dollar e-commerce market in China and Asia.
China – now the world’s largest retail e-commerce market, after surpassing the US in 2015 – is predicted by the market research company eMarketer to reach USD 1.21 trillion in total sales by 2017.
However, China’s competitiveness in the area of cloud computing is yet to catch up to more advanced counterparts. According to the Cloud Readiness Index (CRI) 2016, China currently ranks 13th in cloud readiness, even though 11 of the first 12 countries and territories are in the Asia Pacific.
The cloud computing industry is hot in China right now. At the Beijing stop of the 2016 IDC Directions China Roadshow on Tuesday, Managing Director of IDC China Kitty Fok emphasized the crucial role of the new 3rd platform technologies that comprise cloud computing, big data, social business, and mobility. By 2020, the 3rd platform will become mainstream in the information and communication technology (ICT) market, with its share in the ICT market increasing from 49.2% in 2015 to 71.3% in 2020.
According to IDC, cloud computing has become a core direction for enterprises transforming and upgrading their IT infrastructure. Currently, 64% of enterprises worldwide are exploring and implementing digital transformation.