Alibaba Cloud unveils new resources and products for developers worldwide

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has launched Apsara Developer Community, a new hub created to support global developers through the enhanced provision of developer tools and resources.

Source: Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba Cloud launches the Apsara Developer Community and the Alibaba SMART Scholarship.

“The developer community is an integral part of Alibaba Cloud’s ecosystem. We hope to grow together with our developers by providing the latest technologies, ecosystem resources and business collaboration opportunities,” said Selina Yuan, VP, Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International Business Unit.

Unveiled at Alibaba Cloud’s Global Developer Summit in Jakarta, the Apsara Developer Community offers global developers resources and insights into the rising technology trends ranging from Web 3 and artificial intelligence (AI) to digital intelligence. These resources include access to new development tools and the other resources, including training materials and tutorials, forums and blogs, community events and competitions, plus upskilling and networking opportunities.

The cloud provider also announced the PolarDB Global Hackathon 2023 to encourage developers to explore cloud-native database innovations. US$30,000 in cash prizes are up for grabs. Participants can submit their projects until February 28.

Alibaba Cloud also unveiled the Alibaba SMART Scholarship, which aims to encourage students to join the developer community with cloud-based technologies and become local digital talents. During the first year of this annual scholarship programme, 20 interns from universities will be recruited to join Alibaba Cloud’s local offices to gain more field experience. 

Alibaba Cloud further unveiled a new solution to help developers build superapps cost-effectively and efficiently. Superapps include several independently-developed miniapps within a single platform. Leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s Enterprise Mobile Application Studio (EMAS), the solution aims to enable developers to swiftly build superapps with rich platform capabilities within hours.

Derived from the best practices of Alibaba’s e-commerce superapps Taobao and Tmall, the solution provides developers with an ecosystem featuring components for app infrastructure and business features, containers for running miniapps, and services for DevOps and operations.

“We believe our proven technologies and experience in supporting successful superapps can be beneficial for worldwide developers who are looking to create their own superapps and corresponding platform ecosystem,” said Raymond Xiao, Head of International Industry Solutions and Architecture at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. 

“We can co-create more innovative technologies and solutions together with our developers, boosting further growth of the developer community.” 

Alibaba Cloud, with over 30,000 contributors, has contributed to over 2,700 open-source projects on Github. The cloud provider is also a key member in various open-source communities such as Cloud Native Computing.