Introduction:

Gartner defines cloud-native application platforms as those that provide managed application runtime environments for applications and integrated capabilities to manage the life cycle of an application or application component in the cloud environment. They typically enable distributed application deployments and support cloud-native operations — such as elasticity, multitenancy and self-service — without requiring the development team to provision infrastructure or manage containers.

Alibaba Cloud demonstrates the strongest capabilities in containerization support, backend frameworks, scalability, and high availability. The company holds a significant advantage in container management and serverless capabilities, driven by its focus on platform performance optimization and cost control. This is particularly evident in its strengths in serverless GPU, billing for idle resources, and deep integration among services within the Alibaba Cloud ecosystem. For these reasons, Alibaba Cloud was named a Leader in this Gartner Magic Quadrant report.

Serverless App Engine (SAE)

As the cloud vendor in China with one of the earliest and most comprehensive cloud-native Serverless computing product lines, Alibaba Cloud launched Serverless App Engine (SAE) in 2018—the industry's first containerized, application-centric Serverless PaaS product. It enables ops-free deployment of code packages and Docker images, features auto-scaling and pay-as-you-go billing, and integrates multiple capabilities such as microservices governance and observability.

For the AI era, SAE is committed to enabling unified operations and management for both traditional containerized applications and innovative AI applications. The SAE Application Center integrates various tools like Dify and Jmanus, providing one-click coverage for the entire AI application lifecycle—from development and deployment to operations—helping users further boost efficiency and reduce costs. The platform has also been upgraded to be 100% compatible with core Kubernetes APIs, allowing users to maintain their existing development and operational workflows.

Function Compute (FC)

Function Compute (FC) is the first FaaS (Function-as-a-Service) product launched by Alibaba Cloud in China to feature millisecond-level elastic scaling. As a fully managed, event-driven computing service, FC allows users to simply write and upload code. It then automatically provisions computing resources to run the code in an elastic and reliable manner, providing comprehensive observability and significantly simplifying the development and operations process.

Currently, Alibaba Cloud Function Compute has introduced Function AI, a platform focused on AI application development. The platform integrates a rich set of scenario-based templates and features native capabilities for secondary development and integration with other cloud products, greatly enhancing AI application development efficiency. Function Compute also provides model inference and training support for Alibaba Cloud's Bailian and ModelScope communities, offering elastic computing power for AIGC image generation, AI Agent services, and MCP services. Furthermore, Serverless GPU addresses the core pain points of high AI computing costs and low resource utilization.

Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Native Application Platforms, 4 August 2025

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