>> SiliconANGLE Media presents ... theCUBE! Covering AlibabaCloud'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 an 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. >> 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, inspiration, is really the inspiration that started the museum. I would say that there's two, really the artists thinking about that. The first thing is really about when people, people take a lot of things for granted. One of the goals for this museum, it just shows the people they probably see every day. But just let them, just, wow, okay, that's different from what I thought. I think a lot of people take for granted, but it's really a great invention, a great human contribution to the whole society. I think that 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. When people are talking about science and technology, people often will say, whether we can combine science and technology. But I don't think that's the right way to describe the relationship between science and technology. I would say science and technology, really the two sides of the coin. I really want to see, let people to see two sides instead of mixing together and got one thing. So that's two things that's parallel, just like zero and one. They are two things. When they're put together in a computer, amazing things happen. If you mix the zero and the one, like half something, then it's just not that fun. So I really want to make sure it's the museum of science and art instead of the mixture of science and arts. 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, to show how we have in the past, and with less on the inspiration to help people to think about the future. This museum is really, when we think about everything over here, we did talk about the past, but we want to make sure people think about the future. That's the whole idea about the museum. >> 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. Talk more about that impact 'cause 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 we can see actually I trace back the origin of all the technology. When people are talking about the computer technology, I really want to talk about the computing technology. And then we can trace back, see actually the human is the first signal computing device. Our Mother Nature created for us. If you look at the same things differently, you really can see the origin of that. I think in this museum we talk about two really original things. The first is about the nature origin of the Internet. When talking about Internet, people talk about our current technological infrastructure of Internet. When you look at the human history, how is when people walk, you create an Internet for Earth? You can see a lot of things can trace back. Then, with this kind of trace back, you can help us to think about what's going to happen next. The trace of the original idea is actually very important if you're thinking about technology. >> Talk about the story of Alibaba Cloud. That is not, It's new, Amazon has had it for around, early 2000's. But you guys came right after Amazon, 2009. Still young and growing. How does the Alibaba Cloud take the culture of this inspiration? What are some of the design principles of the Alibaba Cloud? >> Actually I would say the Alibaba Cloud is different from the Amazon Cloud. In the sense we have different vision about the future. Unfortunately though, we are put under the same umbrella called cloud computing by media, I will say that. So we are different, in the sense when the Amazon, actually I show great respect to Amazon. When Amazon started cloud computing, they are really talking about the utility. They're talking about how to cut the cost down. So basically, they start with the low cost of IT infrastructure. That's what I understand. When I started Alibaba Cloud, we know that actually cost is important for sure. But we know that actually the computing part is more important than the cost if you're thinking about the big data era. We started with thinking it's the acentric cloud computing. When you look at our first brochure and we put those words over there. That's almost nine years ago. We called it acentric cloud computing. Instead of the IT-centric cloud computing. This actually, it's not just an idea difference. It's actually, eventually, influenced of the underlying technology infrastructure. Our whole underlying technological infrastructure is designed for the data, instead of just for the IT deployment. >> Jack Ma was talking about this industrial revolution, this digital transformation. What strikes me is you guys have that same art and scientist dynamic, art and science coming together, reminds me of the Steve Jobs technology liberal arts thinking that spawns new creativity. Certainly the iPhone is a great example of that as 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? What does that mean for new developers? >> I think it's really the crossing behind that. If you're thinking about technology and now e-commerce, what's really the one thing behind that that's really changed the way of peoples' lives? Computing in that sense, computing is not just technology. It's really something that changes the way of life of every people. I think the e-commerce change the way of life of every people. In that sense, they are the same. If you look at the peoples' lives, they won't just live on technology. They won't just live on the arts. They need a life, love means everything. By nature, we have to make sure as consumers, they need something more than just one thing. I think we are very lucky we understand that. If you're thinking about the young people, I will give you a few numbers about this conference about young people. In China, we have a very specific word talking about the young people a couple of years ago. We call the 'badiho'. It basically means the generation born of the '80s. When people talk about 'jodiho', that basically means people born after '90s. And then people talking about the 'leniho' it's basically people born after 2000. I think that most of the visitors for this conference are 'leniho', 'jodiho', and 'badiho'. These are all young, all young people. >> The digital culture. >> It's a digital culture. I would rather use my own word in the book I would say instead of digital. For me, digital generation is already an old generation I would say. I would like to call this the online generation. They do everything online. Even the last generation do a lot of things digital because digital is everywhere. But I want to emphasize it's an online generation. They do everything online. >> Dr. Wang, talk about data. You mentioned that's the key ingredient, the fuel for innovation. That's impacting the city brain project 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 crowded. This is just an example of what else is out there. >> Okay. City brain actually it's, again it means different things based on the perspective. One thing that's probably important is the data. This is first time actually I think instead of using the big data, it's better to using what I call the data results. It's a better word than big data. I think the one fundamental thinking for the city brain is we find a human army. Humans finally realize actually that data results is the most precious resource for the city, instead of land and water supply. Because we already know that the land is limited. The water supply is limited. This is very important. It doesn't view data as a non-essential thing. It's just a part of your IT system. We finally realize that data is part of the city instead of part of your city IT system. I think it's a leap frog thinking, at least for me. When it got to that, and you realize that today all the existing IT systems cannot actually really embrace the data. IT system is just to support the people doing the work they used to do. And then you realize we need an infrastructure to really make the value from the data. Just like we have water supply for the city, then you can use the reservoir. Otherwise, the reservoir is useless for the city. I think city brain is just like a water supply system for the data. The city eventually can consume that. We start thinking it's a new infrastructure for the city just like water supply system, just like power grid, just like any way system. That's how we're thinking about it. This is the first thing. The reason we got to the traffic system is this is the problem every city has around the world. From my yesterday's presentation, I just joked about we build two roads for the city, which is too many. I was thinking a lot of people realize it. That's why Boston had the project. They want to get all the roads under the surface. Under surface. But it's still a road. It's still expensive. You know how much money they spend just to move all the roads. >> The big dig, I remember, that was the-- >> Yes, that's a big dig. I don't think that's, that's good for the transportation system, but I don't think that's the number one way for the growth of the city. I think probably most of the city don't have the money to do that. What the data city brain wants 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 city growth. When we start with the traffic, it's just to make sure, 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 read the time. It's not just lights. And then if you're thinking, when we show the eventually, if you have enough data, then we can have less roads in the city but still got the same. >> So the Internet of Things is the hottest trend. 0bviously 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? That takes compute power. That takes a lot of technology. How does Alibaba Cloud think about the architecture? Obviously you have a strategic partner like Intel, Obviously with a lot of compute power. You got to think differently around making the data move. If it's like water, it needs to flow. So real time is really important, but self-driving cars, real time is down to the millisecond, nanosecond. How do you think about that as a technologist? >> I think the, if you go back to the Internet of things, I think it's still the Internet. 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 of the Internet. Cloud computing is the computing of the Internet and edge computing is computing on the Internet. Even the IoT is the computing of the Internet. If you're talking about the data, I think eventually it's really about the data on the Internet. It's not data on the sensor. It's not data on the cloud. Basically it's data on the Internet. I would expect eventually the Internet infrastructure will be improved significantly. It's not an improved cloud. It's not improved edge computing. Or it's improvement of the IoT. But it's really, >> Together. >> it's together. >> So Intel, I was covering them, Mobile World Congress earlier in the year. And obviously five G. You need the mobile overlay, that's super important. You also have the end-to-end inside the cloud. 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. 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. >> Actually the, we certainly have a very good relationship with Intel. I think we share in some sense the same vision. I think that the number one thing is really about people learning about how important the computing is. For me, the Intel is not that, a chip selling company. Intel is really the provider of computing power. That's what I understand. And we can expect eventually the whole ecosystem is really about who is going to provide the computing power. Who is going to provide the infrastructure to make the data? Instead of just equipment supply, eventually the need for computing, and the need for data, will be the challenge for every company, including Alibaba Cloud. We are not, we are not immune from these challenges. We will feel the same challenge. What we want to do is really make sure that with all these partners, provide enough computing for the next 10 or 20 years. We want to make sure that there's enough data flow for the next 10 years. In that sense, it's not the 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, building and R&D over the next three years, which is a lot of money. Also it has a very international and global view. Academics with younger folks. Alibaba Cloud is going to be a part of that, I'm assuming. I'd 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. 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 going to have more evolution. It's going to move fast. How are you guys keeping up with the pace? >> I think the only way, that's not just for the next 10 years. Actually when I started Alibaba Cloud, we take the same philosophy. Actually the user moves very fast than us. If you look at the users in China they move very fast probably than anywhere else around the world. 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. You really can see that. People want you. If you can't satisfy their demand, then somebody else is going to do that. It's not something we want to move fast but >> You have to move fast. >> You have to move fast. That's why the China is special. I want to say China is not just a place for the market. China is the place that pushes you to move faster. That's more important than market size. >> 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, obviously with Intel and the relationships you have. But software is growing exponentially. Certainly in open source, we see Cloud Native Foundation here. They'll probably have Linux foundation. Open source is going to grow exponentially. Most of the code will be shipping. But you have more data growing exponentially. Software is eating the world, but data is eating software. That means 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 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 are 21 years old again right now and you were going to jump into studies and academic and or field. It's a whole new world. >> I think there's probably two suggestions. Not necessarily for the young generation, but I would say it's just a suggestion for the young generation to push that habit. The first thing you mentioned about the data eats software. Well, I would put it in a different perspective. I would say for the last generation, the last two or three generations, I would say the computer era, we are really talking about the computer software. That's pretty much in everything. For this generation, I would say we are talking about computing plus the data. That box is not important, but the computing power is more important. For the computing era, the box is important. >> There's no box. It's the world, it's the cloud. >> That's one thing. The implication for this, I want the young generation to push is, then we need the new infrastructure. Thinking about the build as a great vision, got to have the computer in every home. That's infrastructure. Today when you are in the computing process data era, the infrastructure is not there. I think 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 that innovation and inventions, just like computing in every home. >> That's very important. I think that also speaks to businesses, how enterprises, I remember my first start up, I had to buy all this equipment and put it into the telephone closet. Now, start ups and small businesses don't need IT departments. This has been a big growth area certainly for Alibaba Cloud. But now all businesses might have a small closet, not a big data center. This is going to 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 that 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. >> Actually I was always sad. It's not, the world never has just one side. It always has two sides. The difference is which side is important at a particular time. Just like when people talk about digital and analog, the analog will exist forever. It's hard for you to kill. The question is whether you can find the most beauty from the digital at the same time you can most beautiful part of the analog. I would say that the people, just like when talking about software, people still loved the hardware. And people still loved the touch. The digital has to make sure it looks good. Will it work versus it looks good? I would say we want to make sure people live in a world with two sides, instead of just giving them one side of the world. >> You mentioned people still love hardware. I always say, a car drives but there's still an engine, and people like to understand the engine. There's a maker culture in the United States that'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 motorcycle or a computer or a device now. Powering that with the cloud is an opportunity. How do you view that? >> I would say that eventually, if we have the broad definition of a cloud, I would say eventually, everything the maker makes will be part of the cloud. When talking about clouds, we're really talking about Internet, so every hardware, every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. I would say, if you look at the evolution of the Internet, Internet, it's just a backbone at the very beginning. Actually the first revolution the Internet made is really to make sure that every piece of software is a part of Internet. That's how we got the world wide web. I would say when talking about the maker culture, I would say eventually that every piece of hardware will be part of Internet. So Internet won't be complete without the hardware. In that sense, the cloud is a really essential part of that. >> 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 a similar scale but it's kind of spread over a bunch of other cloud providers. But the interesting phenomenon as data grows exponentially, as software grows exponentially in open source, things are becoming more decentralized. Without talking about the whole initial coin offerings, I know China has banned it and Russia's going to ban it. Other countries are putting a clamp down on crypto currency. Putting that aside, there's still blockchain as a potential disruptive enabler. You're seeing decentralization becoming a new architecture dynamic because you have to support the growth of these devices at the edge. Distributive 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 the distributive architecture versus its physical location. I would say I like the blockchain idea very much. I think eventually it would be part of the Internet. It's not just something that sits on top of the Internet. It would be very fundamental, just like TCP and IP. This is low level, so this would be part of the Internet instead of standing on top of the Internet. Eventually, in that sense, Internet would be very distributed. By thinking that it's nothing, there's no decentralization exists. You still need, even though physically, it's in one place. >> It's almost decentralized, not 100 percent. >> Yeah, yeah. Obviously this would be different. Without Internet, without new software, that basically, just like PC. PC is really in a single box, and we use all software in a box. We distribute architecture. We could have decentralized, but everything actually is distributed. You still cannot trace that. You put like a meeting. A service in a data center. It's actually distributed over this one meeting service. In that sense, it's completely distributed. >> That server list too is a big trend where if you talk about the edge of the network, you got to move compute to the data sometimes. Or have compute on the edge. So this is going to be continued growth, you see that as well right? >> Yes, but I still think, if you use Silicon as a measure for this computing power, I would say if you can see there's more silicon on the edge, but I would say when we put one silicon on the edge, you probably have to put 100 silicons on the cloud. It's still kind of-- >> It's a relationship. >> It's a relationship, just like our body is very important but the brain consumes the most oxygen. >> It's important what's in the cloud then. You got to have the computing, have those ratios. It depends on the architecture. >> Yes, yes. >> Final question for you is as the folks in Silicon Valley, where we're based, and Palo Alto want to 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? >> I would say that actually they would just put the cloud computing aside. Just look at what it really means behind that. I think the cloud, we do have an understanding of what the cloud computing really means. At the very beginning actually, I wouldn't call the company a cloud computing company. I would call it a general computing company. It's really a fraction of what's thinking in China. Again, my comment is not just to view China as the market to sell your product. To view China as the place to inspire having a new product. >> And it's a global world now, the world is flat. >> Yes, just like United States, it's not, it's a place inspired. All the people around the world together to have a new idea. I think the people in China just love new things. They love to try new things. It really can shoot your size of your innovation. >> And it's a global collaboration, it's interesting. That phenomenon is going to 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? 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 and you're 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 big wave that you like? >> I think it's very exciting in a couple of things, three things I would say. The first is really about just look at technology itself. Just like when I described my book, it's really, really exciting in your life if you can see the Internet plus the computing and plus data, cause they're together. Just like you have this engine, you have the airplane, a couple of things, they're together wherever. This is a very, very exciting era. This is not just about a technology era. It's an era that all things happen at the same time, so that's very exciting. That's one thing. The second thing as you read about the city around over here, I think the the Alibaba the Hanzo, it's just a very special for Alibaba, but I think it's special for the other company as well. So this place is very special. Just to give you an idea where you are, this area has the most networked river in the past. If you look at the map, it's like Internet. I would say, all the people over here, just their mindset. It's just on an Internet mindset. Even goes back 100, 200 years ago because the river is the only way for them to travel, for the communications-- >> That's the data back then. >> That's exactly my point, see. If you look at the map, so this is very exciting. The other thing about that the Alibaba, for me, the Alibaba you know Alibaba, we have a very broad opinions. You can feel that. From a technology point of view, that basically means it's the place you can touch every aspect of technology. You have a very slight, very-- >> You have a great surface area aperture to look at impact of life. >> So you think about these three things together. It's hard to say the, you better get excited. >> It's a great time to be in technology, isn't it? Entertainment, e-commerce, web services. >> For me, when I work on the city brain project, it's just the beginning of machine learning. A lot of people, they are fighting for like, when people talk 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 world. The most big AI project. And it's just the beginning. We just start with the one percent. >> It must be a lot of fun. 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? >> I appear regularly to Silicon Valley two or three times every year. We'll probably see sometime early next year. >> Thank you very much for the time, appreciate it. >> Thank you for coming to the conference and coming to the museum. >> Thank you very much for your inspiration. >> Thank you. >> Thank you.