An aerial view of a stadium in Hangzhou that will host some events during the competition. Photo credit: 19th Asian Games Hangzhou 2022
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing subsidiary of Alibaba Group, is helping the 19th Asian Games host its core systems on the cloud to ensure the Games’ stable and efficient operations and reduce the event’s physical footprint.
The cloud computing company is the Games’ official information technology integrator and cloud service provider. As such, it is supporting the Hangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee to run the event’s organization, communications and broadcasting systems on the cloud to serve over 100,000 media broadcasters, staff and volunteers from 45 countries and regions globally.
“We are proud and excited to return to our headquarters this year to help deliver an innovative, efficient, sustainable and inclusive Asian Games in Hangzhou,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a release.
The cloud computing company is building on its past experience supporting large-scale global sports events with digital transformation. This year, the Asian Games will be held in Hangzhou from Sept. 23 to Oct. 8, the city where Alibaba is based.
Smaller IT Footprint
For the Asian Games, its games management, results distribution and game support systems are all running on Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure across 56 venues around Hangzhou.
After gathering real-time data from the timing and scoring systems at the competition’s venues, the cloud-native results distribution system will send data into the central system for distribution through application programming interfaces, better known as APIs, for displaying the results, news feeds and other purposes.
In the past, event organizers had to build physical data centers that required larger, dedicated spaces and bigger IT maintenance facilities. The update helps the organizing committee shrink the Games’ physical footprint.
For the first time in the Hangzhou Asian Games’ history, rights-holding broadcasters will receive live footage from the Games via the cloud.
During the event, Alibaba Cloud will transmit over 5,000 hours of live footage through 68 high-definition and ultra-high-definition feeds. It has also built a cloud-based content platform where media broadcasters can discover the Games’ highlights and news flashes, obviating the need to send crews to the Games, saving them equipment-transport costs and set-up time.
Digital Villages
Alibaba Cloud is also helping the Hangzhou Asian Games build a digital platform with a real-time data intelligence visualization tool to keep the Asian Games village running smoothly.
The platform includes an early warning system for crowd and traffic management. The system is designed to watch for overcrowding in public spaces. It will also alert organizers when there is extreme weather, a power failure, or a fire so that they can respond quickly.
People inside the Asian Games villages, including 20,000 athletes, reporters and officials, can tap an Alibaba Cloud-built intelligent service robot with natural language processing technology. The chatbot can provide 24-hour real-time responses in both English and Chinese related to the services available in the villages.
“The Hangzhou Asian Games will be another milestone for Alibaba Cloud to show how robust, scalable and secure cloud computing technologies can help drive digital transformation of large-scale sports events to bring sports and entertainment to every corner of the world,” Yuan added.
