It's time to re-understand the "Double 11" in the To B circle.

At 23:59 on November 11, the Alibaba Cloud Valley Park in Hangzhou was brightly illuminated. On the data monitoring screen in the Alibaba Cloud Double 11 "Operation Command Room", the sales figures were refreshing at a second-level frequency.

As of 24:00 on November 11, the sales of Alibaba Cloud's distribution partners during the "Double 11" period achieved double-digit growth compared to the "Double 11" in 2023. In the first 11 days of November, the number of new users of AI large model products increased by 135% compared to October; the sales of the Shadowless Cloud Computer were astonishingly more than three times the total of the first seven months of the fiscal year 2025 (from April to October 2024).

Among the numerous indicators on the monitoring screen, one is particularly noticeable: More than half of the sales of Alibaba Cloud's distribution partners during the "Double 11" come from the vast market outside Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou.

This "Double 11" is not the familiar consumer-oriented shopping promotion, but a "Double 11" Cloud Computing Carnival in the B2B industry initiated by Alibaba Cloud.

Image: Alibaba Cloud and partners in the Double 11 "Operation Room" in Hangzhou Cloud Valley

01. The B2B Circle Also Has Its Own "Double 11"

Few people realize that the "Double 11" festival and Alibaba Cloud were almost established at the same time.

In 2009, Taobao Mall held the first "Double 11" online promotion event, which triggered a cyber carnival that influenced the online shopping habits of the entire nation. Also in 2009, the first "cloud" in China, Alibaba Cloud, was founded, becoming the starting point for the rapid development of China's cloud computing industry in the following fifteen years.

Alibaba Cloud has been firmly dedicated to serving small and medium-sized enterprises since its establishment. At that time, most of the people willing to embrace cloud computing were Internet entrepreneurs. Their business scale was not large, and their investment in digitization was limited. They urgently needed convenient and efficient digital capabilities to match the rapid expansion of their businesses. Alibaba Cloud's belief is to enable small and medium-sized enterprises and Internet entrepreneurs to stand on the same starting line as large enterprises through cloud computing products and develop their own business territory.

The journey of Alibaba Cloud opening the "Double 11" in the B2B circle can be traced back to 9 years ago.

In 2015, Alibaba Cloud, in collaboration with partners, put several cloud computing products into the "Double 11" promotion, aiming to make the cloud computing technology, which was still a "noble consumption" at that time, quickly become widely available and become a "fast, good, and cost-effective" public technology service.

In the past 9 years, with the rapid development of cloud computing technology and the continuous emergence of cutting-edge technologies, Alibaba Cloud and 12,000 partners have also continued to promote the popularization of cloud computing services in the B2B market through methods such as providing benefits.

This year's "Double 11", Alibaba Cloud has reduced the prices of several products to the lowest prices throughout the year on the entire network, and also provides each new user with the benefit of "activating the 'White Lotus' service, that is, giving away more than 50 million Tokens of the large model call volume for free (1 million Tokens for a single model)". This allows countless small and medium-sized enterprises that are eager for the large model but have chosen to wait and see cautiously for various reasons to be able to implement model applications with a lower threshold and a faster speed.

Today, "Double 11" has not only changed the to C retail industry, but also more and more small and medium-sized enterprises have used "Double 11" to change and optimize the IT procurement rhythm and process, and focus on core business innovation.

"In addition to recommending useful solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises, we also recommend cost-saving solutions - how to use the 'Double 11' discounts to maximize the savings in technical costs. Now many customers also know that the procurement cost is relatively low in November every year, so they will actively adjust the renewal and procurement cycle to November." Chen Wenjun, CEO of Guangdong Chuangyun Technology, told 36Kr. "For example, a certain group in Guangzhou served by Chuangyun had a relatively scattered procurement rhythm in the early years, renewing a batch of cloud servers every month, and going through a cumbersome internal procurement process every month. After we recommended the optimized procurement plan for 'Double 11' based on the customer's situation, after one or two years, the group has adjusted to renewing the fees twice a year on average, which not only reduces the daily workload but also reduces the procurement cost."

Image: The Alibaba Cloud business team and the partner Chengyun Zhida taking a group photo in front of their precious "Double 11 Battle Robes" over the years

Alibaba Cloud has changed because of small and medium-sized enterprises, and "Double 11" is also different because of partners. During this year's "Double 11", Alibaba Cloud even set up multiple "Partner Operation Rooms" in the Hangzhou Cloud Valley Park for the first time. Distribution partners, Alibaba Cloud public cloud teams, and product technology teams gathered together to jointly participate in this vigorous "Double 11" "battle" through centralized office work, technical support, and efficient face-to-face communication.

Su Chun, General Manager of Shandong Yun Guanjia, told 36Kr that November, where "Double 11" is located, is the most important month of the year for Alibaba Cloud's partners with the highest performance, often accounting for one-seventh or even one-fifth of the partners' annual performance. With the support of this year's marketing activities and preferential policies, Yun Guanjia's "Double 11" performance scale has increased by more than 150% year-on-year as of now.

Hao Kai, CEO of Beijing Chengyun Zhida, shares the same feeling. "'Double 11' is a moment to witness miracles, just like the Olympics and the World Cup. If you want to achieve a business goal, then you can achieve it."

02. Going to a Broader Market

During this year's "Double 11", Alibaba Cloud placed outdoor advertisements in five cities including Chongqing, Qingdao, Wuhan, Fuzhou, and Zhengzhou. Together with 25 partners such as Chengyun Zhida, KuaiKuai Network, Lingyun Chuangxiang, Qiqi Technology, Wanmei Network, Yun Guanjia, and Zhongke Jiuzhou, they jointly paid tribute to customers, further expressing their determination to deeply cultivate the regional market and bring the digital and intelligent fire to every city in China.

Image: In November 2024, Alibaba Cloud placed a "Double 11" advertisement on Chongqing Metro Line 2

In fact, in the entire ecosystem of Alibaba Cloud, the two keywords "region" and "sinking" play two important roles.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology once proposed the "cloud usage" indicator in the "White Paper on Cloud Computing (2024)", reflecting the degree of cloud usage in various regions, and pointed out that "cloud usage" has become a barometer of the digital economy development and the vitality of the digital economy development in various provinces.

From the perspective of geographical distribution, the first echelon of cloud usage is mainly concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta. The cloud usage in the southeastern region is significantly higher than that in the central and western regions. Each region presents unique regional differentiated development characteristics in terms of the breadth, depth, activity, and innovation of cloud usage.

For small and medium-sized enterprises distributed throughout the country, their industry characteristics, regional characteristics, technical capabilities, cloud usage needs, and cloud application needs are all different, and the "local" support and guarantee of regional technical partners are particularly important.

According to Gartner data, in 2023, Alibaba Cloud became the cloud vendor with the largest IaaS market share in the Asia-Pacific region. Shandong Yun Guanjia mentioned above is one of Alibaba Cloud's oldest partners. It has been deeply cultivating the Shandong region for nine years, with its business covering multiple cities such as Jinan and Qingdao, and its sales have grown from zero to hundreds of millions.

Su Chun, General Manager of Shandong Yun Guanjia, told 36Kr that enterprise customers in first-tier cities often focus more on technological innovation, an international perspective, and other diverse needs. The industries are mainly concentrated in finance, e-commerce, Internet, etc., with a higher acceptance of cutting-edge technologies and a relatively abundant budget; in contrast, customers in the Shandong region are mainly concentrated in traditional industries such as manufacturing and agriculture. Enterprises often pay more attention to improving production efficiency, focusing on solutions such as supply chain optimization and smart agriculture, and pay more attention to on-site operation and maintenance services.

The similarity between the two is that regardless of the enterprises in any city, they all focus on the cost control and security of digital transformation. Therefore, as a regional service provider, Yun Guanjia has been combining the local industrial characteristics of Shandong to provide enterprises with more customized digital solutions, and has configured a relatively high proportion of technical service and on-site operation and maintenance teams, requiring all technical team members to pass the Alibaba Cloud pre-sales architect and architecture expert certification to help small and medium-sized enterprise customers achieve efficient development with a "more down-to-earth attitude".

Image: In November 2024, Alibaba Cloud and its partners in Chongqing, Qingdao, Wuhan, Fuzhou, and Zhengzhou paid tribute to customers

If we turn our perspective to the South China region led by Guangzhou and Shenzhen, this region is rich in domestic intelligent manufacturing, intelligent home appliances, AIoT and other industrial belts and has differentiated needs.

He Wei, CEO of Shenzhen Yunfan Changyang, which is deeply cultivating the South China market, told 36Kr that when serving an intelligent door lock enterprise, he learned that the enterprise's needs are not only to complete the network construction of IoT terminal devices, but also to further explore the AI and large model capabilities of Alibaba Cloud and incubate new business lines within the enterprise for business expansion.

In addition to matching the large model algorithm capabilities and large model products for the enterprise, Yunfan Changyang and the Alibaba Cloud team also introduced the intelligent coding assistant Tongyi Lingma and the intelligent customer service solution Tongyi Xiaomi to help the enterprise improve code development efficiency and optimize customer service experience.

"When we communicate with customers, we pay attention to two points: First, our technology application and the customer's business are growing simultaneously, and the usage amount and depth of the cloud are developing with the development of the customer's business. Second, new technologies such as the cloud and AI large models can indeed help the enterprise's business to upgrade better." He Wei told 36Kr.

The vast overseas market is the "next promised land flowing with honey".

Chongqing, a manufacturing powerhouse, has industries in all 31 major manufacturing categories such as automobiles, electronics, and equipment. A large number of manufacturing enterprises are "going global" from this city that is not close to the sea and moving towards the vast global market.

Huang Shan, the founder of Chongqing Xinghuan Yunzhi, disclosed to 36Kr that the tricycles of a certain manufacturing enterprise in Chongqing are widely used in scenarios such as night market stalls and short-distance freight transportation, and are sold to overseas markets such as Southeast Asia and Africa through online live broadcasts. However, due to the time difference and language barriers, it is difficult for the domestic customer service team to answer the questions of overseas users accurately and in a timely manner.

With the help of Xinghuan Yun, the enterprise applied Tongyi Xiaomi to the overseas sales platform, effectively improving the customer service efficiency and response accuracy, and achieving barrier-free and time-delay-free communication with cross-border customers.

Judging from the performance of Alibaba Cloud's Double 11, cities other than Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou contributed more than half of the revenue of distribution partners during the "Double 11", which strongly confirms the growth potential of the middle and long tail market.

The Alibaba Cloud Research Institute once released the "2023 Yunqi Index Report", which calculates and compiles the "Yunqi Index" based on the purchase and application of cloud products and services by users on the Alibaba Cloud platform. The top 100 cities of this index cover 25 provinces in China and include more and more central and western cities. Alibaba Cloud and its partners are constantly helping the central and western regions improve the "digital divide on the cloud", narrow the digital economic gap with the southeastern coastal areas, and at the same time open up a development market with great potential.

03. When Cloud Computing Surpasses Cloud Computing

After more than 20 years of development, today's cloud computing has long exceeded the narrow scope of IaaS + PaaS + SaaS when it was born, and has gradually become a production factor that affects the core business efficiency of enterprises.

On the eve of Double 11, an IDC report attracted widespread attention in the industry - According to the data in the IDC "China Public Cloud Services Market Tracking 2024H1 & Q2" report, in the first half of 2024, the China IaaS + PaaS market increased by 12.2% year-on-year, among which the PaaS market performed particularly outstanding, with a year-on-year growth rate of up to 21.9%.

In the industry, cloud products such as computing, storage, networking, and security are generally classified into IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service); PaaS (Platform as a Service) includes development tools, databases, data analysis, etc., and is the core support layer of the enterprise IT architecture. The growth of the PaaS market often means that the enterprise's demand for agile development and data processing is growing rapidly.

This set of data deeply reflects that Chinese large, medium, and small enterprises are gradually entering the deep water area of digital transformation. Full-stack cloud adoption has gradually become the mainstream, and a large number of technological innovations, business upgrades, data management optimizations, and operational efficiency improvements are born on the cloud.

For large enterprises with large technical teams, it is not difficult to make good use of PaaS products; but for small and medium-sized enterprises, to make good use of PaaS, it is necessary to obtain the help of enterprises such as Chengyun Zhida, Yun Guanjia, Yunfan Changyang, and Chuangyun to provide the full-link assistance from sales to service, so as to conveniently enjoy the ultra-high flexibility, scalability, and cost performance of PaaS products to support the rapid development of business innovation.

In the AI era, the application of large models has become the most imaginative tool to promote the innovation and efficiency improvement of small and medium-sized enterprises. At the same time, "AI anxiety" is coming, and how to apply and deploy has also become a huge confusion for small and medium-sized enterprises. Alibaba Cloud partners help small and medium-sized enterprises analyze business needs, locate key scenarios, and combine the