Tech giants beefing up digital offerings

Tech giants are beefing up digital offerings from cloud computing to online co-working platforms amid China's call for smart infrastructure investment and digital innovation.

Alibaba's office communication and collaboration platform DingTalk said it has started to allow users to build up their tailor-made remote working platforms and functions based on existing cloud functions.

They can also configure different web security levels, corporate images and cloud storage based on DingTalk's existing communications and co-working modules.

Chen Hang, DingTalk’s CEO, said digital infrastructure should become more individualized and inclusive to fit different scales of businesses.

Cloud-native applications can vary according to the business scale and function of each enterprise so could save information technology development and operation costs.

It has attracted more than 15 million enterprises clients and 300 million individual users by the end of the first quarter.

Its remote education tools have supported 130 million students in 140,000 schools nationwide during lockdown periods and it has further pushed into augmented reality hardware and remote meeting solutions.

Audio and video livestreaming functions will also be offered for training professionals, entertainers and performers.

Search giant Baidu also unveiled a smart cloud offering including an artificial intelligence-backed middle office solution.

Baidu has upgraded artificial intelligence modules and development platform to take a piece of cake as companies are rushing to restructure business and drive business models that are more cost efficient.

Developers can choose from more than 250 types of AI functions such as a facial recognition algorithm or use its AI development platform to help build an integrated service function, Wang Haifeng, chief technology officer, said at Baidu Cloud's annual technology conference ABC Summit.

"We want help companies to collect and organize business intelligence and to help find suitable application scenarios and these capabilities will become an important propeller to speed up the application of AI in all types of industries," he said.

It also upgraded a series of industry specific solutions for smart customer service, urban management, health care services and logistics as it joined rivals Tencent and Alibaba to pursue corporate clients seeking digital transformation.

Companies already making use of its AI capabilities include State Grid Shandong Electric Power Co and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Smart finance solutions are already deployed by some 200 companies in areas such as marketing and risk management.