Cisco Cisco Nexus 2224TP GE Fabric Extender Information Guide
Customer Case Study
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Internal Information
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Cisco Nexus Family helps Alibaba Group Open
the Doors to Future Riches
E-commerce giant Alibaba Group prepares for upcoming growth with a Unified Data Center
Fabric built on the Cisco Nexus 5000 and 2000 Series switches.
Introduction
Emerging from a single apartment unit in Hangzhou,
China, the Alibaba Group burst onto the global e-
commerce scene with Alibaba.com - a web service
which expedites B2B trade all over the world – to
become one of China's first online businesses.
Eventually breaking even in 2002, Alibaba.com has
gone on to reap tremendous profits - resulting in an
initial public offering on the US NASDAQ in 2007.
Apart from Alibaba.com, the Alibaba Group has
diversified its efforts with other e-commerce sites
such as Taobao.com, Alipay, Alimama, Alisoft and
Yahoo Koubei!, an online classified service
collaboration between Yahoo! China and the
Alibaba Group. These web services expand the
Alibaba Group's business portfolio to include
services like retail websites and business
management solutions, making it one of the largest
and most comprehensive providers of internet retail
and B2B services. On these sites, Chinese and
foreign firms trade everything from lumber, building
materials and heavy machinery - to iPods,
televisions, and stationery.
Alibaba's web offerings are currently utilized by over 40 million users from more than 240
countries and regions. As this customer base continues to grow, the Alibaba Group aims to
expand its current network capabilities to handle the demands of its users.
Business Challenge
"Our primary concern has always been catering to rapid growth in our user base," said Zhou
Ming, technical manager for Alimama.com. "As our CEO has stated, 2009 will be a year of
investment. Plans are underway to increase staff size by 30 percent
1
, and we needed to make
sure our data centers were prepared."
1
http://pcworld.about.com/od/webbasedapplications/China-s-Alibaba-Says-Profit-Do.htm
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Alibaba Group
•
World leader in e-commerce,
business-to-business trade and
management
business-to-business trade and
management
•
Serves over 40 million users from
more than 240 countries and regions
more than 240 countries and regions
Challenge
•
Availability and performance of
datacenters impacted as user base
grows
datacenters impacted as user base
grows
•
Limited scalability for future
applications and hardware
applications and hardware
•
Complex network cabling
Solution
•
Cisco Nexus 2000 and 5000 Series
switches
switches
Results
•
Enhanced user experience and
satisfaction with better connection
and application availability
satisfaction with better connection
and application availability
•
Increased throughput of servers to
10GE.
10GE.
•
Optimal costs and maintenance fees
due to unified server geography
due to unified server geography
•
Stable base for future expansion