Blue Map, a mobile application developed by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), provides information on environmental pollution such as air quality, water quality, and information on local sources of pollution across the country. It also highlights companies which meet standardized emission targets. Blue Map has already analyzed and informed over 450 companies to take corrective actions towards protecting the environment. The previous version of Blue Map, known as ‘Pollution Map’ was also highly popular, receiving requests from nearly 3 million users and ranked as a “best app” on the Apple store.

In order to disseminate information to the general public, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs collates environmental solutions through a single platform and processes the information based on research into a single app. The Institute, therefore, requires a robust and scalable infrastructure to host its application to handle large volumes of data and manage heavy traffic. Blue Map also requires professional support and resources to manage the backend architecture of its mobile application and provide a good user experience.

The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs agreed to engage Alibaba Cloud in creating a seamless cloud computing architecture using its advanced cloud services suitable for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Alibaba Cloud assigned a dedicated pool of resources, which included architects and professionals to monitor application performance by analyzing the number of users and response times. Blue Map also uses Alibaba Cloud’s security services to protect its application from malicious attacks and to prevent illegal access. With 24/7 professional support from Alibaba Cloud experts that include server architects, database optimization professionals, software architects, database security architects and system optimization designers, Blue Map can now concentrate on its business growth plans instead of worrying about the application’s manageability.

Products Used: ECS, Anti-DDoS, ApsaraDB for RDS, CDN, OSS To address the challenge of managing its surging traffic, the company uses Alibaba Cloud’s scalable ECS servers. The company also utilizes Alibaba Cloud’s advanced notification services to send text alerts to its mobile app users with real-time updates on the environment and weather.