Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has unveiled a new one-stop e-commerce live streaming solution to help merchants launch live, interactive channels to offer personalized online shopping experience.

Livestreaming e-commerce solutions are quickly evolving as a response to the increasing demand during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Built upon Alibaba Cloud’s extensive content delivery networks (CDNs) with over 2,800 nodes in more than 70 countries and regions, the new solution leverages the cloud leader’s large-scale and distributed real-time video processing technology to ensure an uninterrupted signal transfer between sellers, buyers and the nearest distribution centre.

Its proprietary cloud transcoding technology, Narrowband HD, guarantees image quality while reducing bit rates, enabling a high-resolution livestreaming experience with low bandwidth costs. It helps address challenges surrounding the quality of audio and video, high cost of essential software such as real-time video transcoding and low efficiency in traffic management and CDNs. Users can enjoy livestreams with a latency of around two seconds, essential to the experience of flash sales.

Built on Alibaba Cloud’s immersive technology, the solution provides a rich range of essential features with minimal latency for virtual sales sessions, including livestream replays, product video showcases embedded into livestreaming windows and real-time subtitle translation for cross-border livestreams, among others. It also supports end-to-end and device-to-cloud livestreaming, making it easier for smaller merchants to launch their own sales sessions.

Starting from June 1, this year’s Tmall 618 Mid-Year Shopping Festival has seen a majority of merchants and brands using Alibaba Cloud’s livestreaming service. Sales generated from Taobao Live in just the opening hour of the event surpassed that of the entire first day in 2020.

The livestream solution was issued alongside over 20 other products, solutions and updates during today’s virtual Alibaba Cloud Summit 2021 to further help businesses on their digitalization journeys. Among the offerings, the seventh generation of Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Compute Service (ECS 7) and an updated cloud-native Data Management Service (DMS) will debut in Asia followed by the rest of the global markets.

Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, commented during the summit: “As one of the leading providers and trusted partners in the global cloud market, technological innovation is at the heart of Alibaba Cloud’s long-term development. Introducing new products and solutions and continuously enhancing product features helps us deliver on our promise to our global customers and partners.

“The acceleration of the digital transformation agenda and adoption of emerging technologies is particularly encouraging in Asia, motivating us to constantly improve our innovative and R&D capabilities to stay at the forefront of the industry.” – TradeArabia News Service