On December 20, 2017, Alibaba Cloud announced the one-stop enterprise collaborative research and development cloud product — Cloud effect, its public cloud version officially entered the commercial service stage, will provide more enterprises with RESEARCH and development efficiency services. On the scene of the press conference, three new functions were also unveiled for the first time: project set of cross-team joint operation, multi-dimensional testing service, and convenient and efficient mobile terminal workbench.

Cloud Efficiency is a one-stop enterprise collaborative RESEARCH and development cloud, supporting project management and collaborative research and development of large-scale teams under the three modes of public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. It provides efficient tool support for the full cycle of application project research and development (demand -> development -> test -> release -> operation -> operation). The implementation of agile RESEARCH and development, streaming implementation of delivery and hierarchical automation and other advanced concepts, so as to facilitate rapid product innovation and iteration and r&d efficiency upgrade.

Within Alibaba Group, after eight years of continuous iteration and evolution, the continuous delivery and continuous integration platform has grown into an important r&d tool relied on by tens of thousands of applications, providing efficient support for tens of thousands of R&D every day. At present, the application of Cloud Effect in Alibaba Group has achieved remarkable results: in the research and development practice, it supports the creation of 50,000 + work items per week, test execution 190,000 + times per week, code scanning 250,000 + times per week and continuous integration construction 300,000 + times per week. At the same time, I am responsible for the management of million-scale servers of the group in terms of operation and maintenance services, supporting the operation of 500,000 servers per minute, the distribution of files 1 billion times/month, the distribution amount of 2000TB, and the daily publication times 2W. Cloud Effect provides unattended application operation and maintenance solutions based on hybrid cloud as well as automation, data-based and intelligent application operation and maintenance solutions. It is worth mentioning that it also supports the double Eleven Promotion jointly completed by thousands of people.

Externally, after more than two years of integration and nearly eight months of public testing practice, Cloud effect will export this ability through Ali Cloud. At present, there are more than tens of thousands of enterprises in cloud efficiency service, and it is still growing: there are more than 100 new enterprise users every day, and tens of thousands of innovative and deliverable online work items. From 0 yuan free trial, to ten million level of commercial cooperation, cloud effect is welcomed by enterprises. Whether it is the steady development of the revenue of the old business from 500,000 yuan to 800,000 yuan per capita, or the rapid growth of the profit of the new business 10 times of the revenue 100 times, the case of cloud efficiency to help the development of enterprises is common. Some enterprise executives said, “The use of cloud effect not only improves the research and development efficiency, but also enjoys the leading technical strength and expert-level communication services of Ali in various fields, enhancing the innovation ability and technical strength of the enterprise.”

Cloud efficiency has opened a brand new collaborative innovation network, and the enterprises using cloud efficiency are the nodes of this network. The value obtained by enterprises from cloud efficiency is not only the efficiency of software development and engineering, but also includes new technological innovation, Internet product operation, new business model and new innovation ecology.

Li Zhi, head of Alibaba’s Cloud service, said: “After the accumulation of DevOps practice experience in previous business scenarios, the cloud service version enters the stage of commercial service in a more perfect form: new multi-dimensional testing services, quantitative feedback data through test reports; At the same time, connect ali Cloud web page with Dingding to meet the needs of daily office and mobile office during fragmented hours. On this basis, Cloud efficiency will continue to facilitate rapid business iteration, ensure the quality of r&d and digital transformation.”

Cloud efficiency aims to improve the overall efficiency of the whole project cycle in multiple dimensions

At the same time, cloud effect public cloud version also released three new functions: cross-team joint operation project set function, multi-dimensional testing service, convenient and efficient mobile terminal workbench new function.

Project set management refers to multi-project collaboration, taking into account vertical hierarchical management of business and horizontal cross-team joint operation, effectively controlling and following up the overall progress of multiple projects and task division of relevant members through visual modules, and also providing multi-project risk management. It is worth mentioning that this module has been verified by the practice of large-scale projects of double 11 over the years, tracked and ensured the smooth implementation of project sets involving hundreds of cross-business lines and cross-department teams, detected potential non-compliant designs in advance, improved human efficiency and ensured the achievement of key business objectives.

Project set milestone planning and multi-project overall schedule management

The testing service is more abundant and perfect, providing unit test, interface test, Alibaba Java code protocol scan, internationalization test, twin engine (Doom) test, laboratory and other new parts. Among them, the dual-engine test platform has been practiced by tmall business team, which helps to improve test coverage and greatly improve test efficiency through online data collection, offline service isolation, revisiting and comparison, and automatic regression testing. The newly added test set report is closely combined with the assembly line and release sheet to provide clear application information under test, summarize the results to form a report, and support customized query, which is conducive to test audit and process control.

Summary of test report results and custom query

The mobile workbench is connected with the web page of daily work and dingding enterprise edition, which not only provides multiple operations of a single task, but also supports the whole project and project collection management, making it more convenient for users to follow up work.

Project management through mobile cloud effects

Ye Du, a senior technical expert at Alibaba, said: “R&d efficiency has become a very core competitiveness of software enterprises. Cloud efficiency is the carrier of Alibaba’s r&d management concept and excellent engineering practice for many years, and is the booster for the rapid innovation and iteration of many products in Alibaba’s economy and the development of new technologies. Now enterprises can use mature R&D concepts and infrastructure at low cost through cloud efficiency. In the future, cloud efficiency will strengthen the external output of intelligent RESEARCH and development, and further help enterprises improve efficiency and business development.