How 1hao Store Built a Scalable Hybrid Cloud for E‑Commerce Success

Q: You have over a decade of experience as an internet technology executive and have founded a company; can you share pivotal moments in your career?

A: My transition from employee to entrepreneur was crucial. I co‑founded the "UFO Shoes" project, working a 9‑2‑7 schedule (9 am start, 2 am finish, 7 days a week). In eight months we became the top women’s shoe seller on Tmall, though the venture later failed in a B‑round, illustrating the high failure rate of internet startups.

During my five years at 1hao Store I built core systems such as the 1hao Mall, intelligent product system, and cloud platform, and established a comprehensive technical management framework covering large‑project governance, agile development, career development, and automated operations.

Q: How do you balance work and life while leading a high‑pressure tech team?

A: I treat work and life as parallel universes that I can switch between. When thinking about business logic, I unconsciously tap a funk rhythm, letting the music relax my muscles and keep me productive for hours.

After graduating, I spent days writing code to fund my band and evenings writing songs. I believe spending time on what you love makes life exciting.

Q: What is 1hao Store’s engineering culture and how does it tie into performance evaluation?

A: The corporate values are "integrity, customer, execution, innovation"; the engineering culture adds "embrace change, pursue excellence, equality, openness". Performance is assessed through a dual metric: a "culture" score reflecting process and spirit (collaboration, ownership, drive) and a KPI score measuring concrete results.

We define core‑business KPIs (e.g., search conversion rate, detail‑page arrival rate, system availability) and project KPIs (completion quality). Culture scores are evaluated via 360‑degree feedback, weighted averages, and occasional adjustments by managers.

Q: How does 1hao Store’s e‑commerce system achieve high availability, scalability, and low cost?

A: We view the e‑commerce system as a fusion of technology and management philosophy, requiring flexibility to adapt to rapid business model changes. Large e‑commerce players build integrated systems; smaller ones that cobble together disparate solutions often struggle to keep up.

We structure the system into four layers:

Foundation Platform Layer: Distributed storage, cache, data access, and a Hadoop‑based big‑data platform, all service‑oriented and virtualized, managed by automated operations.

Application Layer: Service‑Oriented Architecture (SOA) exposing core services for products, users, transactions, inventory, and promotions, ensuring stability and enabling rapid innovation.

Open Platform: Provides SaaS‑style APIs and services (e.g., customer service, warehousing) for third‑party developers and customers, extending the ecosystem.

Monitoring & Governance Platform: Integrated monitoring of system health and business metrics, enabling quick incident response.

Q: How does 1hao Store’s hybrid‑cloud solution handle massive traffic during events like 618 or Double‑11?

A: We built a sizable private cloud and layered a hybrid‑cloud management platform on top. The workflow includes server validation, authorization, public‑cloud initialization, deployment, and eventual resource reclamation.

1. Server validation checks IP, memory, disk, etc., matching the inventory. 2. Authorized public‑cloud machines gain access to the private‑cloud network. 3. Configuration templates initialize public machines to production standards. 4. Automated deployment publishes applications; after use, the platform revokes access and settles costs. 5. The hybrid‑cloud management platform orchestrates private and public resources to serve business workloads.