How Suning’s Cloud‑Driven R&D Management Fuels Digital Transformation

On November 23 at the GITC Global Internet Technology Conference, Suning.com IT Headquarters Executive Vice President Qiao Xinliang discussed Suning’s digital transformation and the IT management practices behind it, emphasizing that IT management should start from the pursuit of excellence and trust, focusing on people, products, and systems to build a high‑performance team.

The theme of GITC 2018 was “Knowledge Creates Things.” Qiao analyzed common challenges in enterprise IT management—personnel, teams, products, and systems—and the specific challenges Suning faces today. Suning’s IT department now includes roughly 10,000 R&D staff, over 4,000 systems, more than 100,000 services, peaks of over 120 billion service calls per day, and averages 4,000 releases daily, presenting a massive management challenge.

Suning has evolved through three architectural generations: POS‑store sales + ERP, WCS + POS dual‑line operation, and now a re‑architected O2O‑integrated three‑generation architecture. Qiao stresses that every R&D artifact is an asset that should be managed throughout its lifecycle. The third‑generation architecture shifted development from project‑centric to product‑centric, enabling continuous integration, deployment, and improvement. Its foundation is Suning Cloud, which Qiao proudly claims is the only Chinese enterprise that has achieved seamless online‑offline integration, with the entire group operating on a single cloud platform.

Effective IT management must focus on value and continuous improvement. Building an excellent system energizes employees, fosters better product outcomes, and translates the myriad challenges faced by CTOs and CIOs into concrete management frameworks, which Suning embeds into its cloud products.

For enterprises like Suning that have endured painful digital‑transformation journeys, Qiao argues that the primary focus should not be on basic cloud infrastructure but on migration, development, monitoring, and governance clouds—key challenges for CTOs and CIOs. Suning is deploying cloud products such as one‑click site building, 24/7 unattended operation, sub‑second releases, performance governance, gray‑release, digital asset governance, and intelligent alerts, all playing a pivotal role in establishing its IT management system.

Successful enterprise IT management requires efficiency and cost control, and Suning Cloud is dedicated to leveraging the experience and capabilities gained from its own digital transformation to empower other companies, helping them build excellent management systems, create core competitiveness, and enable CTOs and CIOs to achieve efficient, humane management.