Users who were frustrated by having to wait in line to make payments during last year's Double Eleven event may be able to breathe a sigh of relief. According to the Alibaba Technology Assurance Department, during this year's Double Eleven event, Tmall will be able to handle all of China’s internet users accessing the platform simultaneously without needing to queue up when making payments.
Alibaba stated that Tmall is paying special attention to mobile channels during this year's Double Eleven event, particularly Alipay Wallet, ensuring that overall transaction capacity exceeds the combined total of PC and mobile transactions from 2012. This allows every smart device user to conveniently place orders anytime and anywhere.
According to Ebrun, Alibaba has invested tens of millions overseas this year, adding 100G of CDN bandwidth, enabling users worldwide to access Tmall, Taobao, and other Alibaba e-commerce platforms and complete payments quickly.
The elimination of payment queuing is attributed to Alibaba's technology moving away from IOE (IBM - server provider, Oracle - database software provider, EMC - storage device provider), allowing the Alipay technical team to operate more efficiently. Official sources revealed that during this year's Double Eleven event, the system can support tens of thousands of users completing payment experiences simultaneously.
In addition, Alibaba added over 20,000 new servers for expansion to ensure smooth transactions between the platform and sellers for this Double Eleven event. Meanwhile, these 20,000 cloud servers will not incur additional operational costs.
"Based on experience from the past few years, the peak of one year often becomes the norm for the next. Therefore, adding these 20,000+ cloud servers can also be seen as laying a solid technical foundation for the rapid development of e-commerce in 2014," said the Alibaba Technology Assurance Department.
From multiple sources, it was learned that Alibaba has prepared several emergency response plans in the technical aspects. The Alibaba technical department has conducted over a hundred internal drills specifically for the Double Eleven event.
Recalling last year's Double Eleven event, within the first minute, Alipay processed 136,000 payment transactions. However, with the sudden surge in traffic to Tmall, the Alipay system nearly collapsed. Additionally, multiple commercial bank payment systems experienced congestion, forcing Alipay to activate its queuing system. This affected the user shopping experience to some extent, as some users who had placed orders might not have been able to pay promptly, resulting in their inability to contribute to Tmall and Taobao's transaction volume on Double Eleven day.
Notably, then-Tmall President Zhang Yong had previously mentioned that Tmall had prepared preventive measures to avoid payment failures on promotion days: "Firstly, guiding Alipay users to pre-deposit funds, which many consumers did, successfully alleviating payment pressure; secondly, preparing numerous emergency response plans."
However, these contingency plans did not guarantee a perfect user experience for Tmall during last year's Double Eleven event.