Why Alibaba Is Dismantling Its Middle Platform – Lessons for Modern Enterprises

Alibaba’s business development is slowing, prompting a call to thin the middle platform for greater agility, according to Zhang Yong’s recent internal article.

Consequently, Alibaba is completely dismantling its middle platform.

In 2015, Zhang Yong introduced the "big middle platform, small front‑end" strategy; five years later he is tearing down the very platform he built, raising questions about whether the original strategy was flawed.

The "big middle platform, small front‑end" concept has become an industry norm, with many larger companies adopting similar structures.

Zhang Yong’s "all‑in‑mobile" success with the Taobao app cemented his standing at Alibaba, leading him to propose the middle‑platform strategy, which after more than five years became a standard across the industry.

The original goals of the middle platform were to create a unified technical architecture, product support system, data‑sharing platform, and security framework, effectively spanning the organization horizontally to support diverse business models.

Undeniably, Alibaba’s middle platform has strongly supported business growth over the past five years, contributing to increasingly stable systems during events like Double 11.

After the "big middle platform, small front‑end" era, Alibaba launched the "five new" strategy: new retail, new manufacturing, new finance, new technology, and new energy, aiming to address sustainable growth and second‑curve challenges through disruptive innovation.

In new manufacturing, Rhino Manufacturing exemplifies an independent team approach, as advised by Zhang Yong, because relying on the middle platform for early‑stage projects can be inefficient.

Similarly, the Taobao Discount version operates as an independent unit to pursue deep, rapid innovation.

The middle platform excels at "combinatorial innovation"—reusing standardized capabilities to create new offerings, such as Hema Fresh combining inventory, payment, AI, and security services—but it struggles with "disruptive innovation," which requires breaking existing front‑, middle‑, and back‑end structures.

An Alibaba middle‑platform architect explained that the goal is to keep only the most abstract components in the platform, making it a thin layer that leverages common capabilities to boost efficiency and free resources for front‑end customization.

Thus, the issue isn’t that the middle platform fails, but that the scenario has changed; it remains valuable for efficiency and combinatorial innovation, yet many large enterprises now face deeper challenges requiring disruptive innovation.

Looking ahead, the middle platform will become increasingly thin and fragmented, aligning with earlier observations about platform fragmentation.

Finally, the article advises CEOs to avoid blindly following trends in digital transformation, emphasizing long‑term commitment over short‑term hype.