Nov 15, 2018| JD Technology

JD.com Recognized for Cloud Native Open Source Technology Usage with CNCF Top End User Award

Ella Kidron social responsibility; award

JD.com, China’s largest retailer, has been presented with the Top End User Award by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) for its unique usage of and contribution to cloud native open source projects. CNCF is the largest open source community dedicated to Kubernetes and cloud native software stacks and technologies. The award was announced at China’s first KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference, which gathered thousands of technologists and end users in Shanghai from November 13-15 to discuss the future of open source technology development.

Providing the ultimate e-commerce experience to customers requires JD to house and process enormous amount of information that must be accessible at incredibly fast speeds. To put it in perspective, five years ago there were only about two billion images in JD’s product databases for customers. Today, there are more than one trillion, and that figure increases by 100 million images each day. This is why JD turned to CNCF’s Kubernetes project in recent years to accommodate its clusters.

JD currently runs the world’s largest Kubernetes cluster in production. The company first rolled out its containerized infrastructure a few years ago and, as the clusters grew, JD was one of the early adopters to shift to Kubernetes. The move, known as JDOS 2.0, marked the beginning of JD’s partnership with CNCF to build stronger collaborative relationships with the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors. Ultimately, CNCF provided a window for JD to both contribute to and benefit from open source development.

In April, JD became the CNCF’s first platinum end user member, and took a seat on the organization’s governance board in order to help shape the direction of future Foundation initiatives. JD’s overall commitment to open source is highly aligned with its broader Retail as a Service strategy in which the company is empowering other retailers, partners, and industries with a broad range of capabilities in order to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and provide a higher level of customer service.

JD’s Kubernetes clusters support a wide range of workloads and big data and AI-based applications. The platform has boosted collaboration and enhanced productivity by reducing silos between operations and DevOps teams. As a result, JD has contributed code to projects such as Vitess, Prometheus, Kubernetes, CNI (Container Networking Interface), and Helm as part of its collaboration with CNCF.

“One contribution that we are very proud of is Vitess, the CNCF project for scalable MySQL cluster management,” said Haifeng Liu, Chief Architect of JD.com. “We are not only the largest end user of Vitess, but also a very active and significant contributor. We’re looking forward to working together with CNCF and its members to pave the way for future development of open source technology.”

Vitess allows JD to manage resources much more flexibly and efficiently, reducing operational and maintenance costs, and JD has one of the world’s most complex Vitess deployments. The company is actively collaborating with the CNCF community to add new features such as subquery support and global transactions, setting industry benchmarks.

“JD spearheads the use of cloud native technologies at scale within the APAC market, and is responsible for one of the largest Kubernetes deployments in the world,” said Chris Aniszczyk, COO of Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “The company also makes significant contributions to CNCF projects and its involvement in the community made JD a natural fit for this award.”

JD will continue to work on contributions to cloud native technologies as well as release its own internal and homegrown open source projects to empower others in the community.

Nov 14, 2018| ESG

JD.com Honored For Commitment to Sustainable Future

Rachel Liu CSR | social responsibility; award

JD.com, China’s leading technology-driven e-commerce and retail infrastructure service provider, announced today it will join the ranks of top global companies in receiving the 2018 SEAL Business Sustainability Award.

The award is a testament to the company’s commitment to environmental causes, extensive contributions to social innovation and the far-reaching impact of its Corporate Responsibility Program.

For the past five years, JD.com’s CSR team has galvanized the company, creating and implementing programs that foster sustainable development. Through its initiatives, every part of the JD.com footprint, from the creation of a product, to its packaging, sale and delivery, is executed with the expectation that the company’s impact on society and the environment will be positive, long lasting and sustainable.

The SEAL Awards consider sustainability, environmental achievement and leadership in granting its business sustainability award, which recognizes the most sustainable companies globally. In receiving this award for its global impact, JD.com joins honorees including Apple, Impossible Foods, Nike, Patagonia, Samsung and Seventh Generation.

Libo Ma, JD.com’s head of corporate social responsibility, said, “JD.com is honored to receive the SEAL Award and join leaders in corporate sustainability, a cause we champion for the long term. The recognition is a testament to our multi-faceted sustainable platform and enduring commitment to environmental protection, poverty alleviation and social innovation and education. We believe a company should be measured not only by traditional business metrics, but also by how much it contributes to the people and society. At JD, our commitment stems from our fundamental belief that we have a responsibility to continuously improve society.”

Matt Harney, Founder of the SEAL Awards, said, “JD.com’s recycling initiative received the highest possible environmental impact score from our judging panel. The program’s impact metrics – covering 47 cities throughout China, with over 1 million articles of clothing and over 400,000 toys recycled – are extraordinary. We applaud the leadership JD.com has shown in leveraging its vast customer base and logistics network to create immediate and meaningful sustainability improvements for our planet.”

As China’s largest retailer, JD.com’s sustainable platforms use the company’s technological advances such as its self-developed logistics and supply chain network that can reach 99% of China’s population. The company has applied innovative technology and expansive infrastructure to making significant contributions to social innovation, environmental protection, education, disaster relief and poverty alleviation, with the total value of contributions exceeding RMB 700 million.

The SEAL Awards is an environmental advocacy organization that honors leaders in business and the media for their work in combatting climate change. SEAL’s organizational pillars are its Business Sustainability Awards, Environmental Journalism Awards, and Environmental Research Grants program.