Alibaba Restructuring: CEO To Take Over Cloud Business Following Server Outage

Alibaba will undergo major restructuring in 2023 following a recent server outage.

On Dec. 29, the Chinese tech giant Alibaba revealed a fresh set of organizational changes in an email to all staff members. The chairman and CEO of Alibaba, Daniel Zhang, declared "progress" as the keyword for 2023.

In light of progress, an adjustment will primarily affect its cloud business, namely Alibaba Cloud. According to Pandaily, Jeff Zhang will reportedly take up leadership of DAMO Academy to concentrate on exploring cutting-edge technologies, while Daniel Zhang will take over as president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

Jeff Zhang began working at Alibaba in 2004 on the e-commerce site Taobao, and in 2018 he was named president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. Jeff Zhang was responsible for developing a platform that could adapt to quick changes.

Alibaba Organizational Restructuring

The company will reportedly undergo several changes in authority. Tech Crunch reports that Zhou Jingren will assume the dual positions of vice president of DAMO Academy and CTO of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. Cheng Li was succeeded as CTO of Alibaba by Wu Zeming, who also retained his position as CTO of the local life services business division.

One of the founders of Alipay's technological platform, Cheng Li joined Alipay in 2005 and is going to leave the company. Since the end of 2019, he has served as the CTO of Alibaba and Ant Group.

Starting in April 2023, Jane Jiang will succeed Judy Tong as CPO of Alibaba. Tong began working for Alibaba in 2000, founded Cainiao Network in 2013, and has been the company's chief talent officer since 2017.

The critical aspect of this adjustment is Alibaba Cloud. Since Q4 of 2021, the rate of revenue growth has slowed. Its revenue growth rate fell to just 4% in the third fiscal quarter of 2022, marking the first time this has happened.

While Jeff Zhang Jianfeng has resigned as head of cloud business, Daniel Zhang Yong, also chairman of Alibaba, currently serves as president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and the business communications app DingTalk in an acting capacity.

Alibaba's Cloud Server Outage

After its cloud services had their "longest major-scale breakdown" in a decade in Hong Kong and Macau, the CEO of Alibaba Group Holding has taken direct authority over the Chinese internet giant's cloud computing operations, a crucial growth driver.

According to SCMP, Alibaba Cloud suffered a significant server outage on Dec. 18 that affected a large number of customers. The platform's downtime, which lasted from 8:56 am on Dec. 18 to 0:30 am on Dec. 19, was unquestionably the longest it experienced in more than 10 years.

The recent incident may be the reason for the organizational restructuring amidst Alibaba's departments to strengthen the business further.

"Once the trust is gone, our clients will leave us," he wrote. "A service breakdown might be a rare incident at Alibaba, with a low probability of 0.01 per cent or even 0.0001 per cent, but once it happens, it has 100 per cent happened to our clients."