 SiliconANGLE Media presents the CUBE. Covering Alibaba Cloud's annual conference. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. Hello everyone, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE, Wikibon and theCUBE. We are here for exclusive CUBE conversations at the Alibaba Cloud Conference here in Hangzhou, China. We're here with Dr. Wang, who's the chairman of the Alibaba Group Technology Committee, as well as the founder of Alibaba Cloud, here in the new Museum of Inspiration at the event. Thanks for spending the time with me. Oh, thank you for coming. So before we talk about Alibaba Cloud and all the goodness going on here at the conference, talk about this Museum of Inspiration. It is new and it has kind of a display theme. You kind of walk through time. What was the motivation and the inspiration for the museum? Yeah, I think the keyword for the Museum of Inspiration is really on the inspiration instead of the museum. So I would say that that's a true, really the origin of thinking about that. The first thing is really about when people, people take a lot of things for granted. And so one of the goals for this museum, it just shows the people they probably see every day. But just when you get, wow, okay, that's different from what I saw. So I think a lot of people take for granted, but it's really the great invention or great human contribution to the whole society. So I think the one thing is really about that people understand why we got here today. So that's the first thing. The other thing is really about science and technology. So when people talking about science and technology, people often will say, okay, when we can combine science and technology or that. But I don't think that's the right way to describe the relationship between science and technology. I would say science and technology is really the two sides of the coin, okay? So I really want to see, let people to see two sides, instead of mix it together and got one thing, okay? So that's two things that's parallel, just like zero and one. There are two things, okay? When they put together in a computer, the amazing things happen, okay? So if you mix the zero and one as like half something, then the word is just not that far, okay? So I really want to make sure it's the museum of science and art instead of the mixture of science and the arts, okay? So that's the one thing. The other thing is really about the inspiration of future. Most of the museum is really about the past and just show how we have in the past. And with less on the inspiration to help people to think about the future. So this museum is really, when we think about everything over here, so we did talk about the past. We want to make sure people think about the future. So that's the whole idea of our day. And the computer industry is fairly young if you go back to modern computing. But you kind of have a take here about how technology really is embedded in life. Yeah. Talk more about that in tech because that seems to translate to the conference here at Alibaba that technology isn't just about the speeds and the feeds, it's about the integration into life. Yeah, and I think that from this museum, you can see that actually I traced back the origin of all the technology. So when people talking about the computer technology, I'm really want to talk about the computing technology. And then trace back, okay, see actually the human is the first computing device and just our mother nature created for us, okay. So if you look at the same thing is different, you can really can see the origin of that. So I think in this museum, we talk about two really original things. The first is about the nature origin of the internet. So when I'm talking about internet, you're talking about our current technology for our internet. So let me look at the human history. So I always said when people walk, you create the internet for our earth, okay. So you can see that a lot of things can trace back and then with this kind of trace back, you can help us to think about what's going to happen next. So the trace, the original idea is actually a very important thing if you're thinking about technology. Talk about the story of Alibaba Cloud. I mean, that is not, I mean, it's new. Amazon has had it for around early 2000s, but you guys came right after Amazon, 2009, still young and growing. How does the Amazon, I mean, the Alibaba Cloud take the culture of this inspiration? What are some of the design principles of the Alibaba Cloud? Yeah, actually, I would say the Alibaba Cloud is different from the Amazon Cloud. In a sense, we have different vision about the future. And unfortunately, we are put on the same umbrella called Cloud Computing by media, okay, I would say that. So we are different. In a sense, when the Amazon, actually I show great respect to Amazon, okay, but when the Amazon started Cloud Computing, we are really talking about the utility. We're talking about how to cut the cost down, okay. So basically it's not, they start with the low cost of IT infrastructure. That's what I understand, okay. Well, when I started Alibaba Cloud, we know that actually cost is important, for sure. But we know that actually the computing power is more important than the cost. If you're thinking about the big data area, okay. So we started with thinking, it's the data-centric Cloud Computing. When you look at our first brochure, and we put word that over there, that's almost nine years ago. So we call the data-centric Cloud Computing instead of the IT-centric Cloud Computing. So this actually is not just an idea difference. It's actually eventually influenced of the underlying technology infrastructure. So our whole underlying technology infrastructure is designed for the data, instead of just for the IT department, yeah. So Jack Ma was talking about this industrial revolution, just digital transformation. And what strikes me is you guys have that same art and scientists kind of dynamic artists and science coming together. Reminds me of Steve Jobs, technology, liberal arts, thinking that spawns new creativity. Certainly the iPhone is a great example of that, is one of the many things. But now the new generation is coming together. You have a big artist focus here at the event, music festival, not just technology. How is that part of the focus at the event here? And what does that mean for new developers? Okay, I think it's really the crossing behind that. If you're thinking about technology and our e-commerce, what's really the one thing behind that is really changing the way of people's life, okay? And so in that sense, computing is not just technology. It's really something that changes the way of the life of every people, okay? I think that e-commerce changes the way of life of other people. In that sense, they are the same, okay? So if you look at the people's life, they won't live just on technology. They won't just live on the arts, okay? They need a life, okay? Life means everything. So by nature, we have to make sure that consumers, they need something that more than just one thing. So I think we're very lucky, we understand that. And if you're thinking about the young people, and I wanna give you a few numbers about this conference about young people. And you know that in China, we have a very specific word talking about the young people a couple of years ago. We call it the body and bones. It basically means the generation born after 80s, okay? And then with people talking about the Jiu-Ling-Ho, that basically means people born after 90s, okay? And then with people talking about the Li-Ling-Ho, it's basically people talking about people born after 2000, okay? And I think that most of the visits for this conference Li-Ling-Ho, Jiu-Ling-Ho, and Faling-Ho. So this is all young, all young people, you know? The digital culture. It's a digital culture. And I would rather, using my own word in the book, I would say instead of digital, from a digital generation is already an old generation, I would say. And I would rather to cause online generation. They do everything online. And even the last generation do a lot of things digital because digital is everywhere. But I would emphasize it's an online generation to do everything online, yeah. Dr. Wang, talk about data. You mentioned that's the key ingredient is the fuel for innovation. And that's impacting the city brain project that you guys are doing. Talk about the city brain and the role of data and how that's impacting the societal users out there. Certainly here in China, the traffic is big. But this is just an example of where else is out there. Okay, so city brain actually is, again, it means different things based on the perspective thing. So I think one thing probably is important is about the data. And this is the first time, actually, I think it's time to use the big data. It's better to use what I call the data resource. It's a better word than the big data, okay. So I think the one fundamental thinking for the city brain is we finally human army, human finally realize actually the data resource is the most precious resource for the city instead of land and water supply. And because we already know that the land is limited, water supply is limited, okay. So this is very important. And we don't view data as not essential thing. It's just not part of your IT system, okay. But we finally realize actually data is part of the city instead of part of your city IT system. So this is, I think it's the leapfrog thinking for that, at least for me. And I feel when it got to that, and then you realize actually today, all the existing IT system cannot, I have no, cannot actually really embrace the data. So IT system is just support people do the work they used to do, okay. And then you realize, okay, we need the infrastructure to really make the value from the data, just like we have water supply system for the city. Then you can use the reservoir, okay. Otherwise reservoir is useful for the city. So I think city bring just like on a water supply system for the data. And so the city eventually can consume that. And so we start thinking about, okay, it's not new infrastructure for the city, just like water supply system, just like a power grid, just like, you know, underway system, you know, that's how we're thinking about it. Okay, it's the first thing. The reason we got to the traffic system is this is the problem every city has around the world, okay. And from my yesterday's presentation, I just joked about we built two roads for the city, okay. Just too many. And I think a lot of people realize that's why Boston had the project, they want to get out the road on the surface, okay. On the surface, but it's still road, okay. It's still expensive. You know how much money they spend to just move all the road. The big dig, I remember that was the big dig. Yeah, that's a big dig, okay. I don't think that's good for the transportation system, but I don't see a sustainable way for the growth of the city, you know. I think probably not made a lot, most of the city don't have the money to do that, okay. So what the data city will want to do, whether we can take the resource of data and we can optimize every aspect of the city so we can use less resource to support the city growth, okay. So when we start with the traffic, it's just make sure, so you know that when we use the data to optimize the traffic lights, the idea behind that actually, we use the data to optimize the time, how to just use the time. It's not just the lights, okay. And then if you're thinking about, when we show the eventually, okay, if you have enough data, then we can have less road in the city but still got the same, you know. So the Internet of Things is the hottest trend of machine learning and artificial intelligence are part of that and the cloud powers this new edge of the network and the data has to flow. So the question that a lot of technologists who are architecting these solutions ask is, how do you make the data go at a very low latency? And that takes compute power, that takes a lot of technology. How does Alibaba Cloud think about the architecture? Also you have strategic partners like Intel, obviously with a lot of compute power but you got to think differently around making the data move. If it's like water, it needs to flow. So real time and it's really important with self-driving cars, real time is down to the millisecond, nanosecond. So how do you think about that as a technologist? Oh, I think the, if it goes back to Internet of Things, I think it's still the Internet. So I would say eventually, if you're thinking about the word cloud computing and people use edge computing and people talking about Internet of Things, for me it's just the computing on the Internet. So cloud computing is a computing on the Internet and edge computing is a computing on the Internet. Even the IoT is a computing Internet. So if you're talking about the data, I think eventually it's really about data on the Internet. So it's not a data on the sensor. It's not data on the cloud. So basically data on Internet. So I would expect that eventually the Internet infrastructure will be improved significantly. So it's not improved the cloud. It's not improved like edge computing or it's improvement of the IoT but it's really... Together. It's a together process. So Intel, I was covering them at Mobile World Congress earlier in the year and I'll say 5G, you need the mobile overlay. That's super important. But you also have the end to end inside the cloud. So obviously Intel is a strategic partner. Can you talk about the relationship you have with Intel and also your philosophy, technically speaking with the ecosystem because it's not just Intel, it's everybody now. So there's a lot of people here at this event, American companies as well as international companies who are now going to be part of your ecosystem. Yeah, actually we sort of have a good relation with the Intel and I think we share the same vision of that. I think the number one thing is really about people really about how important the computing is. So for me the Intel is not a chipset company. The Intel is really the provider of computing power. That's what I understand. And we can expect to eventually the whole ecosystem is really about who is going to provide the computing power and who is going to provide the infrastructure to make the data flow okay. Instead of just an equipment supply because the eventually the needs for the computing and the needs for the data will be the challenge for every company including the Alibaba cloud. We are not immune for this challenge okay, but we will feel the same challenge. So what we want to do is really make sure that with all these partners provide enough computing for the next 10 or 20 years. And we want to make sure that enough data flow for the next 10 of years. So in that sense it's not a traditional ecosystem as like you do this and you do that. It's basically how we can work together to really make sure we have the challenge for the data and computing in the next 10 years. Yesterday we covered the news that you guys announced 15 billion in R&D over the next three years which is a lot of money. And it also has a very international and global view academics with younger folks. Alibaba cloud is going to be a part of that I'm assuming. Love to get your thoughts on how you see that intersecting. But the question for you is the cloud world today is moving at very, very fast speed. We're seeing Amazon for instance has been the best in terms of new announcements every year. I mean not one or two like a ton of announcements a lot. How are you guys going to continue to keep the pace to move faster because the city brain is a great project but it's gonna have more evolution. It's gonna move fast. How are you guys keeping up the pace? Yeah I think the only way, that's not just for next 10 years. Actually when I started Alibaba cloud actually it takes the same philosophy. Actually the user moves very fast than I was. And if you look at the users in China and they move very fast probably than anywhere else around the world. And if you use the city brain project, I would say city brain project is basically tell the people we need the computing power more than any other task okay. And so you really can see that people want you. So if you can't satisfy their demand and somebody else is going to do that okay. So it's not something we want to move fast. You have to move faster. You have to move faster. So that's why that actually, but China is a special, so I always say China is not just a place for the market. It's China is the place that push you move faster okay. That's probably more important that it's a market side okay. You mentioned data technology and information technology kind of transferring to a new world. Software is also a big part of it. Software you have to compute, I'll see what the Intel and the relationships you have. But software is growing exponentially. Certainly in open source, we see a cloud native foundation here, the proper Linux foundation. Open source is going to grow exponentially. More code will be shipping. But you have more data growing exponentially. So software is eating the world, but data is eating software. So that means software is better, data is greater than software. If you look at it that way, that's super important as the new architects, you and I were just talking about how we've been in the industry for a while. You certainly have an amazing career from Microsoft now at Alibaba. A new generation of architects and developers are going to create new innovations around this dynamic of data. What's your advice and how do you view that if you were 21 years old again right now and you were going to jump into studies in the academic and to our field. It's a whole new world. Yeah, I think the two suggestions may not necessarily be for the young generation, but I would say it's just a suggestion for the young generation to push that habit. The first thing that you mentioned about the data-eating software, but I would put this in a different perspective. I would say for the last generation, for the last two or three generations, I would say the computer era. We are really talking about computer plus software. That's pretty much everything. But for this generation, I would say, okay, we are talking about computing plus the data. So that box is not important, but the computing power is more important. But for the computer era, the box is important. People are like, oh, there's no box, it's the world. Let's cycle out. So that's one thing, okay. And the implication for this is, I would like young generation push is then we need the new infrastructure. Thinking about the build has a great vision that have the computer in every home, okay. That's infrastructure. But today when you are in the computing plus the data era, the infrastructure not there, okay. So I think the one of the vision for the Alibaba Cloud is make sure that we have this infrastructure for the next 10 or 20 years so the young generation can take advantage of that and to do their innovation and invention, okay. Just like computing in every... And that's very important. I think that also speaks to businesses, how enterprises, I mean, I remember my first startup, I had to buy all this equipment and put it into the telephone closet. Now startups and small businesses don't need IT departments. This has been a big growth here, certainly for Alibaba Cloud. And but now all businesses might have a small closet, not a big data center. So this is gonna change the nature of business. So work and play are coming together. This speaks to the Museum of Inspiration theme here where you can have work and play kind of integrate but yet still be separate in an analog digital world. What's your vision on this new dimension of everything doesn't have to be just digital. You can have an analog life and mix it with digital. Yeah, actually I was always said, okay, it's not, the world never would have just one side, always have two side. And the difference is which side is important at a particular time, okay. So just like when people talk about digital and analog, the analog will exist forever. It's hard for you to kill, okay. The question is whether you can find the most beauty from the digital at the same time, you can find the most beauty part of the analog. And I will say that the people, just like when talking about software, people still love the hardware. And people still love the touch. They still love to make sure it looks good, okay. When it works, you know, versus the work, it works good, okay. So I will say we want to make sure people live in a world that with the two side, in standard just give them one side of the world. You mentioned people still love hardware. I was always say there's always a car drives but there's still an engine and people like to understand the engine. As a maker culture in the United States it's been growing over the past two decades. And now even more accelerated is the maker culture because of the edge and how technology has become part of the fabric of life. How do you see that maker culture being enabled by more cloud services because anyone can make a skateboard or a motorcycle or a computer or a device now. And powering that with a cloud is an opportunity. How do you view that? And I will say that eventually, you know, if we have the broad definition of a cloud, I will say eventually everything the maker makes will be part of the cloud. So when talking about cloud, we're really talking about internet. So every hardware, every piece of hardware will be part of the internet. So I will say, if you look at the evolution of the internet, internet is just a backbone at the very beginning. Actually the first revolution the internet made is really make sure that every piece of software is a part of internet. That's how we got the World Wide Web, okay. And I will say when talking about the maker culture, I will say eventually every piece of hardware will be part of the internet. So internet won't be complete without the hardware. So that's what I, in that sense, you know, the cloud is really the essential part of that yet. There's some really interesting things happening here in China that I'm excited about. One of them is the nature of the user base and how close you guys are to that. In the US, similar scale, but it's kind of spread out a bunch of other cloud providers. But the interesting phenomenon as data grows exponentially and as software grows exponentially and open source, things are becoming more decentralized. So without talking about the whole initial coin offers, I know China has banned it and Russia's gonna ban other countries there, putting a clamp down on cryptocurrency. Putting that aside, there's still blockchain as a potential disruptive enabler. You're seeing decentralization becoming new architecture dynamic because you have to support the growth of these devices at the edge. So distributed computing has been around for a while, but now a decentralized architecture dynamic exists. How do you steer that technology direction? You have to separate from the distributed architecture versus it's a physical location. So I would say, I like the blockchain idea very much and I think eventually it would be part of the internet. It's not just that something sit on top of the internet. It would be very fundamental, just like TCP, IPOP. It's at this low level, okay. So it would be the part of the internet. It would stand on the top of the internet. So eventually, in that sense, internet would be very distributed, okay. But by thinking that it's not saying there's no decent existence, okay. You still need, even though the physically, it's in one place, but... It's almost decentralized, not a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, so obviously that would be different. So without internet, without like new software, that basically, just like PC. PC is really in a single box and we use all the software in a box, okay. But with this distributed architecture, now we could have a day center, but everything actually is distributed. You cannot trace that, okay. So if you cannot, you know, you put like a meeting, a service in an end-day center. It's actually distributed over this one meeting, service, okay. So in that sense, it's completely distributed. And serverless, too, is a big trend where, you know, if you talk about the edge of the network, you gotta move compute to the data sometimes. Or have compute on the edge. So this is gonna be continued growth. You see that as well, right? Yes, but I still think, you know, if you use the silicon as a measure for this computing power, okay. I would say, if you can see, there's more silicon on edge. But I would say, when you put in one silicon on edge, you probably have to put a hundred silicon on the cloud. So it's still kind of balanced. It's a relationship. It's a relation, which is like, you know, the, our body's very important, but the brain consumes the most oxygen, okay. That's it. It's important what's in the cloud then. You gotta have the computing, you gotta have those ratios. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It depends on the architecture. Yes, yes. Final question for you is, as the folks in Silicon Valley where we're based in Palo Alto wanna know is Alibaba, what it means to them, if you have a chance to say a few things about what Alibaba Cloud is to America, what would you like to say? Oh, I would say that actually, they would just put the cloud computing aside. Just look at what's really means behind that. I think the cloud, we do have no understanding what cloud computing really means, okay. And at the very beginning actually, I wouldn't call the cloud computing company. I would call it, it's a general computing company. It's really to reflect one thinking in China. So again, my comments is not just to view China as the market to sell your product, and to view China as the place to inspire having a new product, yeah. And it's a global world now, the world is flat. Yes, just like in the United States, it's not praise inspired. All the people around the world to get to have a new idea, okay. I think the people in China just love news things, okay. They love to try new things. So it's really can show your psyche of innovation. And it's a global collaboration. It's interesting that that phenomenon is gonna continue. You've done amazing work here. Congratulations on the Museum of Inspiration and the projects you're working on. Personal question for you. What are you excited about now? I mean, we kind of joke about how old we are now, but the young people certainly have a great future ahead of them. But you have a lot of experience in your steering, Alibaba's technology committee across the group, as well as being the founder of the cloud. What are you excited about right now, technically speaking? What's the big, or just impact? What's the way, what's the big way that you like it? I think it's very exciting in a couple of things. Okay, three things I would say. The first is really about just look at technology itself. And just like what I just wrote about both, it's really, really exciting in your life. If you can see the internet, plus the computing, and plus data, could sit together, okay. You know, just like you have this engine, you have the airplane, a couple of things sit together in the way of errors. It's a very, very exciting error. So this is not just about an error, a technology error. It's an error that all things happen at the same time. So that's very exciting. That's one thing though, okay. The second thing is really about the city, the one over here. And I think the Alibaba, you know, Hangzhou is just a very special for Alibaba. But I think it's special for the profits or for the other companies as well. So this place is a very special. And let's just give you an idea where you are, okay. You know, this area has the most networked river in the past, okay. If you look at the map, it's like internet, okay. So I would say that all the people over here, they, the mindset is just an internet mindset even goes back 100, 200 years ago because the river is the only way for them to travel for the communication. That's the data back then. That's what they say. Yeah, so if you look at the map, so this is very exciting. The other thing is about the Alibaba, you know. For me, the Alibaba, you know Alibaba, we have a very broad business, okay. You can feel that. But from technology point of view, that basically means it's the place you can touch every aspect of technology. So it's very, you know, in still just had a very slight, you know, very... You have a great surface area aperture to look at the impact of life. Yeah, so you're thinking about the three things together and it's hard to say, okay, you better to get excited, okay. It's great time to be in technology, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean entertainment, e-commerce, web services. Yeah, so for me, when I work on the city burn project, it's just the beginning of machine learning. So a lot of people, they are fighting for like, you know, when people talking about speech recognition, they are fighting for the last one meter for the speech recognition. But if you're talking about city brain, it's the word, you know, the most big AI project. It's just the beginning. So we just start with the 1%. It must be a lot of fun. I mean, you got a lot of data to work with. You have real life integration. It's super exciting. When are we going to see you in Silicon Valley? Yeah, I pay regularly to Silicon Valley and do it two or three times every year. And we probably see sometime early next year, you know. Great, well thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming to the conference and coming to the museum, you know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Great inspiration. Thank you.