Apsara Project Initiation

Dr. Wang Jian initiates the Apsara project, a bold endeavor to build a proprietary distributed cloud operating system and infrastructure from scratch, which would become the foundation for Alibaba Cloud and its services like ApsaraDB RDS.

Significance

This marked the strategic pivot for Alibaba to develop its own core technology, breaking dependence on foreign vendors and enabling the creation of hyperscale infrastructure essential for future growth, including managed database services.