Report on the Need and Impact of IT Services at Alibaba Group

This report delves into the critical role of information technology (IT) services within Alibaba, a global e-commerce and technology giant. It meticulously examines the necessity of IT for Alibaba's business survival, highlighting the significance of technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and colocation. The report outlines the requirements for effective IT implementation, including management support, cost considerations, employee training, and strategic planning. It showcases the various applications of IT within Alibaba, such as cloud infrastructure, AI-powered customer service, and electronic command-based manufacturing, while also discussing the advantages like improved customer satisfaction, business innovation, and cost reduction. Furthermore, the report addresses the potential risks associated with IT implementation, including data theft, AI vulnerabilities, and server breakdowns, providing a comprehensive overview of the impact and challenges of IT in a leading e-commerce business.

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Need of IT Services at ALIBABA
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Need for IT at Alibaba...........................................................................................................2
3. IT necessary for business survival.........................................................................................3
4. Requirement for application of IT within the organization...................................................4
5. Use of IT by Alibaba..............................................................................................................5
6. Advantages of using IT at Alibaba.........................................................................................6
7. Risks associated with IT implementation..............................................................................7
8. Maintenance and monitoring of IT services...........................................................................8
9. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................9
10. References..........................................................................................................................10

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1. Introduction
The chief purpose of this report is to put an emphasis on the technology of
telecommunication and its related functional areas with the multinational group of Alibaba.
The necessity of the technology regarding the overall execution of the business at the group
of Alibaba is said to be the significant area where the report will put its focus on. The primary
aspect of the report concerns about the different factors regarding the application of the
information technology concept within the organization of Alibaba, the advantages regarding
the application, the maintenance of the technology within the system and many more (Dong,
Sun & Sun, 2016).
Alibaba is one of the largest conglomerate company that deals with the business in the
fields of retail, e-commerce as well as internet of technology. The company has a well-
established business in the fields of retail service as well as e-commerce for selected goods.
This organization also provides entertainment as well as internet services to its customers
with the help of the information technology.
2. Need for IT at Alibaba
The organization mainly provides E-commerce services to the consumers of various
destinations as well as of different business entities. This is said to be a significant sector
where the current as well as emerging ICT technologies are adhered for conducting the
business. The overall functionality of the organization is carried out with the help of present
technologies such as landline, fax, mobile phones, e-mail as well as other services that are
Internet-Based. The organization thrives to provide the sale of its products with the usage of
two methodologies that is business-to-consumers and business-to-business (Greeven & Wei,
2017). The overall potential growth of the e-commerce business regarding Alibaba is greatly
enhanced by the business-to-business activity. The information technology application within

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the e-commerce sector of the organization at Alibaba enhances the business with new
opportunities and expanded distributive channels for carrying out the business. This is
provides the organization to operate with a small infrastructure as well as it is meant to be
very cost effective regarding the carrying out of business in respect to the organization as
well as significantly provides solutions to all the customer needs. With respect to the growth
of the business-to-business organizations the users of the internet has grown rapidly thus
making it a significant approach regarding the business processing of an e-commerce
industry.
Moreover, as the organization provides services to a significant number of customers
at the same time then it can be well depicted that the only technology that can adhere the
solutions are the information technology services. Thus, it can be said that the information
technology services are necessary for the management of the IT services with respect to the
organization of Alibaba.
3. IT necessary for business survival
As the information technology is growing day by day in the modern times, businesses
like Alibaba as well as similar e-commerce organizations has started to implement the
innovation. The strategies that are adhered by the organizations to enhance the business can
be significantly depicted as the information technology implications. With the innovated
implementation of the information technology, the business may provide a considerable
efficiency to the consumers as well as businesses that are facilitated by the organizations. The
most depicted change that is identified with the manual e-commerce systems is the manual
shopping systems that are provided to the customers (Gulumbe & Rahman, 2017).The online
shopping is said to be the most efficient procedure that is being adhered by the e-commerce
system of Alibaba as from the company’s survey it is identified that the consumers feel more

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convenient in shopping from an online source rather than from the manual stores. Moreover,
the legacy telephony is also substituted by the VoIP communications among the various
stakeholders, which enhances the communication methodology within the business as well as
with the customers. In addition to this it can also be identified that the digital marketing
strategies were also much more effective as well as an enhanced methodology for the
advertisement of the products or the services as provided by the organization of Alibaba. As
the digital marketing strategies are identified as, the most effective marketing platform for
any organization this encompasses the innovation of the information technology services
within the organisation (Havinga, Hoving & Swagemakers, 2016). The digital marketing
strategies are very effective for the maintenance of the sustainability factor regarding the e-
commerce platforms like Alibaba. Moreover, the cloud computing technology is also
depicted as one of the important factor regarding the storage of the different data or
information in the server of the organization from where the products or the services can be
effectively visible by the customers or the other businesses that tends to facilitate themselves
with them.
4. Requirement for application of IT within the organization
The chief requirements that are observed for the application of the information
technology within the organization of Alibaba is stated briefly:
Support of Management: The implementation of the information technology changes within
the organization requires the focused support of the top management department. This will
gain the trust of the employees that are associated within the organization regarding the
implementation. It must be critically assessed that the management shows effective support
regarding the changes as well as demonstrates the implemented support while interacting
with the employees of the organization.

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Cost of the implementation: The implemented changes that are adhered by the organization
demands financial constraints to cope with the successful changes within the environment of
the organization. The cost will vary with the various constraints of the changes that are
depicted for implementing information technology within the organization (Zhu, 2018). But
the budget of the implementation must be planned beforehand or the consequences will lead
to failure.
Installing the services: The team associated with the implementation must also be
responsible for the installation of the services as well as maintenance of the changes within
the organization.
Training to the employees: The implemented changes might be new to the employees
associated with the organization, so to overcome the situation the management team of the
organization must conduct proper training sessions for increasing the potential of the
employees regarding the usage of the information technologies, which are already
implemented within the organization.
Planning of the implementation: The organization on the first hand must identify the IT
changes that will be effective for their infrastructure of the organisation (Zhang &
Ravishankar, 2019). Thus, an enhanced planning is necessary which is to be conducted by the
management as well as the employees of the organization for deciding the recommended
information technological changes within the organization.
5. Use of IT by Alibaba
There are different information technology changes that are adhered by the
organization of Alibaba to cope with the smooth functionality of the system and the entire
environment regarding the organization (Jia et al., 2018). The significant technology that is

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adhered by the organization for providing sustainable as well as potential enhancement of the
organization is the cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Cloud computing: With the help of this technology, the organization of Alibaba deployed
approximately 1200 content delivery network nodes that helped in the expansion of the
overall cloud infrastructure that supports traffic to the organization’s various platforms. The
company figured out that by the help of 15 data centres distributed all throughout the globe,
the organization would be capable to provide their services to the world without any
disruptions.
Artificial Intelligence: The implementation of AI enabled robots were undertaken by the
management of the organization that kept a constant track to the data centres of the
organization in which the data as well service information are stored for future references.
Moreover, in addition to this stated IT constraints there is another important
implementation sector regarding the IT Services for the organization of Alibaba. This is
identified as the Colocation technology that is used by the organization for the enhancement
of the CPU utilization when the consumers visiting their server are maximum (Lin, 2018).
The colocation technology used by Alibaba is developed by the organization itself in
accordance to the support of the optimised computational methods based on cloud
computing. By the help of this technology, the daily usage of the CPU gets an increment of
above 40% and maximum achievable rate is recorded as 60%.
6. Advantages of using IT at Alibaba
The potential benefits or advantages that are being identified by the organization of
Alibaba by the implementation of the information technology is stated as follows.
Better customer satisfaction: With the implementation of the cloud computing technology
the data sets are well organized within the environment of the Alibaba that helps the customer

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to search better for the services or the products they are looking for (Wu, Li & Kee, 2016).
The cloud computing technology also provides a great telecommunication network within the
environment of the organization as well as with the customers associated with the
organization.
Telecommunication network: With the enhanced artificial intelligence powered customer
service operations, the organization effectively provides solution to customers present within
the network system. This feature provides a great telecommunication network of the
organization with its customers.
Business Innovation: The multi-tier architecture that is being used by the organization
enhances the innovation regarding the businesses of Alibaba (Naidu et al., 2019). The
organization tends to implement innovative strategies within the organization itself. By this,
the organization examines the various prospects of the innovation. If the innovation is set to a
standard level it is made available to the users of the organization.
Electronic command based manufacturing: The organization of Alibaba is not keeping them
limited to the retail or the e-commerce systems (Ter Chian Felix Tan & Pan, 2016). They are
thriving for the implementation of the distributed voice recognition in their manufacturing
sector for the better implications in the development as well as management of the products.
Flexibility: The implementation of the Information Technology by Alibaba enhances the
flexibility of the overall system as well as the organizational structure regarding the products
or services that are provided by the organization in terms of server usage as well as the CPU
usage of the server (Peng et al., 2016).
Cost reduction: The information technology application within the environment of Alibaba is
set to reduce the costs of the labour as well as server maintenance of the organization with the
implication of smart and artificial intelligent systems.

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7. Risks associated with IT implementation
The potential risks that are identified with the technological implementation within
the environment of the stated organization are stated as follows:
Data Theft: If the cloud-computing server is not maintained with proper security features
then the data of the trusted customers are exposed to potential risks or even the data could get
theft (Tan et al., 2015). The data regarding the customers are very valuable, whose loss can
create serious data integrity issues within the organization of Alibaba.
Artificial Intelligence breakdown: The technological implemented robot that are used for the
security of the data servers, should be kept a proper track as in certain cases the vulnerability
might occur that will put the server end to lead for the failure.
Big Data Fraud: With the implementation of the Big Data Techniques in the server
environment of the organization the data sets present within the organization is exposed to the
attackers if the Big Data are enacted to fraud management.
Server breakdown: The viruses or malware attacks can hamper the overall network server as
the cloud computing technology is adhered by the organization. The attack can lead to the
overall server failure of the organization thus leading to disruption of the overall
functionalities of the server.
8. Maintenance and monitoring of IT services
The maintenance of the IT services must be provided by the software maintenance
team for analysing the effective benefits as well as potentials threats as well as risks within
the environment of the organization (Tan, 2015). The maintenance as well as monitoring of
the IT services will provide enhanced level of support to the data assets present within the
organization as well as the provide an improved business environment regarding the

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organization of Alibaba. The specialized team of development of the IT services as well as
the employees must be provided with enhanced training facilities regarding the maintenance
of the IT services. Moreover, the AI associated robots that are kept for the server
maintenance should be tracked down on a regular basis to restrict the failure of the security
that are provided to the network servers (Zubair & Gradusov, 2019).
9. Conclusion
Thus, the above report deals with the Information Technology services need at the
organization of Alibaba. In the above report the IT services adhered by the organization is
briefly explained along with the effective advantages and identified risks for the data
enactment within the specified server. Thus, it can be concluded that the organization tends to
provide better customer services regarding the implementation of the information technology
in the network as well as organizational environment of the organization. The report also
includes the technological activities that are imposed for the enhancement of services towards
the customers associated with the organization.

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10. References
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Development: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 975-994). IGI
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Greeven, M. J., & Wei, W. (2017). Business Ecosystems in China: Alibaba and Competing
Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi and LeEco. Routledge.
Gulumbe, Y. A. B. M. A., & Rahman, A. A. (2017). IoT on E-Commerce, Present and
Future: A Review of Alibaba Case Study. Innovation, 11(1), 41-46.
Havinga, M., Hoving, M., & Swagemakers, V. (2016). Alibaba: a case study on building an
international imperium on information and E-Commerce. In Multinational
Management (pp. 13-32). Springer, Cham.
Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The Application of Artificial
Intelligence at Chinese Digital Platform Giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.
Lin, O. C. C. (2018). Alibaba Group. World Scientific Book Chapters, 243-256.
Naidu, G., Widhianingtyas, V. K., Alenzi, J. M., & Alfahad, A. (2019). Studying the E-
commerce based Business conglomerate (A Study Case: Alibaba. com). Journal of
the community development in Asia, 2(1).
Peng, X., Cai, L., Lu, S., Cai, Y., & Gao, Y. (2016). Antecedent and dimension of symbiotic
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Journal of Industrial Integration and Management, 1(04), 1650011.
Tan, B. (2015). Alibaba. com. Managing Organizational Complexities With Digital
Enablement In China: A Casebook, 13, 1.

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Tan, B., Pan, S. L., Lu, X., & Huang, L. (2015). The role of IS capabilities in the
development of multi-sided platforms: the digital ecosystem strategy of Alibaba. com.
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Wu, J. H., Li, Q., & Kee Wei, K. (2016). Alibaba’s IT platform and electronic commerce
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Zhang, G., & Ravishankar, M. N. (2019). Exploring vendor capabilities in the cloud
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