Technology
France
Enterprise/Public Sector
"Partnering with Alibaba Cloud has been important to CaoCao’s success. Their robust cloud computing solutions have provided the scalability, reliability, and security we need to efficiently run our ride-hailing business in Paris. Thanks to the flexibility provided by Alibaba Cloud, we've been able to focus our resources on innovation and expanding our services, while confidently meeting the demands of our growing user base."
Mr Sheng Liu
Chairman & CEO, CaoCao Mobility Paris
About
CaoCao Mobility Paris
CaoCao Mobility Paris
CaoCao Mobility Paris is an eco-responsible chauffeur service that reinvents urban mobility. In the crowded ride-sharing space, CaoCao sets itself apart from the competition with its three values of sustainability, service quality and user safety. Supported by car manufacturer Geely, CaoCao operates its own dedicated fleet of taxis and vehicles, all driven by its own highly trained full time permanent drivers.
Founded in 2019, CaoCao has been partnered with Alibaba Cloud since its launch. As CaoCao has grown its Paris based ride-hailing service, its use of Alibaba Cloud’s cloud services has grown too.
Alibaba Cloud’s solutions and services facilitate all aspects of CaoCao’s day-to-day and strategic operations. This highly collaborative strategic partnership has allowed CaoCao to move faster as a company and scale its marketplace more efficiently.
Challenges
As a leading ride-hailing service, CaoCao faces unique challenges around high data volumes, data security and safety, scalability and regulatory compliance. The amount of data generated by its day-to-day operations is vast, consisting of user profiles, ride requests, GPS location data, driver information, payment transactions, and more.
Managing and storing this data efficiently and safely can be challenging but is paramount to maintaining user trust and complying with France’s strict regulatory requirements for the ride-hailing sector. Rules and regulations governing data privacy, driver licensing, vehicle safety, and insurance requirements requiring ongoing monitoring and adaptation to any changing legal frameworks.
CaoCao experiences fluctuating demand over days, weeks and months. Scaling to handle massive volumes of data at peak times while minimizing costs during off-peak periods is vital to optimizing resource use while maintaining service reliability. Scalability in both data storage and computing resources was essential to accommodate varying workloads, and required a partner with the availability and flexibility to handle these peaks and valleys.
Why Alibaba Cloud
Addressing these challenges requires a combination of robust infrastructure, scalable technologies, data management best practices, and a strong focus on security and compliance - making Alibaba Cloud the obvious choice.
CaoCao benefited greatly from the reliable IaaS and Alibaba Cloud Landing Zone solutions, which allowed its business team to migrate core applications to the cloud seamlessly. This was enhanced by its GDPR-compliant European IDCs. As a green VTC company, CaoCao also benefits from the reduced carbon footprint from using a cloud based solution rather than on-premise, making it easier for CaoCao to achieve its own environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.
Aside from the core infrastructure and solutions, Alibaba Cloud’s talent for efficiently responding to customer inquiries at speed to solve problems before they escalate gives CaoCao a level of robustness and reliability that allows it to focus on its core business strategy. This is further improved by Alibaba Cloud’s local service team in Europe, for global coverage and responsiveness.
Architecture
When CaoCao began working with Alibaba Cloud following the launch of its ride hailing business in 2019, it was using Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Compute Service, ApsaraDB for MySQL, Cloud Enterprise Network, Server Load Balancer, NAT Gateway, Elastic IP Address, and Objective Storage Service products. Since then it has expanded to use Alibaba Cloud’s Anti-DDoS to increase the security protection, and more recently its ApsaraDB for Redis database to increase performance.
Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure acts as a force multiplier for CaoCao’s broad cloud computing needs. All aspects of its core business are hosted with Alibaba Cloud, including the driver service, mobile booking applications, API Management, vehicle management system and order system. CaoCao uses databases for MySQL open source relational database management and ApsaraDB RDS for SQL Server, which are fundamental in the development of its business and software.
CaoCao also uses Alibaba Cloud’s Cloud Compute Services and a number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in Europe.
Key Results
By using a range of interconnected and mutually supporting Alibaba Cloud solutions throughout its partnership, CaoCao has been able to improve its cost efficiency by 30% compared to using alternative cloud providers on premise options.
This cost saving is bolstered by greater operational efficiency, and reliable regulatory compliance provided by working with a single cloud provider, and working with Alibaba Cloud specifically has allowed CaoCao to reduce the carbon emissions associated with its IT infrastructure, minimizing not only its storage and usage costs, but also the CO2 emissions.
Looking Forward
As a long term partner of Alibaba Cloud, CaoCao benefits from access to all of Alibaba Cloud’s latest innovations. In order to further streamline its operations, CaoCao has been exploring the opportunities presented by Alibaba Cloud’s AI suite of products. Finally, to further its sustainability and eco-friendly commitments, CaoCao is also seeking to strenghthen its collaboration with Alibaba Cloud to support its ESG priorities.
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Snapshot
CaoCao capitalized on Alibaba Cloud's comprehensive suite, from Elastic Compute Service to advanced security and databases, fostering a 30% cost efficiency boost, streamlined operations, regulatory compliance, while also reducing IT carbon footprint - culminating in a greener, more cost-effective expansion.
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