“At that out, our major challenge was that we have no predecessors to learn from. At most, a chain brand could have several or half a hundred outlets, but we have nearly 200. There simply wasn’t a unified, standardized and replaceable management product that we could reply on at each plaza,” Feng Zhongqian told TMTPost.

Though with the support from IBMS, Talent Cloud 1.0 was still not a perfect approach to managing so huge amount of data.

For example, a major problem with the system was information overloads. Since the system had to manage so many information spots, it became increasingly difficult to match different spots appropriately, which also ultimately resulted in huge delay requirements. Covering as many as 16 sub-systems, it’s easy for different sub-systems to be affected by network delay, which posed a huge safety risk for systems that required quick response, such as the fire alarm system.

Therefore, Wanda decided to reduce the coverage of Talent Cloud and separated the fire alarm sub-system, which alone possessed over 20,000 information spots. At the same time, the fire alarm sub-system, along with the electronic patrol, information distribution and background music sub-systems, were nested, instead of integrated onto Talent Cloud Version 2.0. This way, Wanda managed to keep the visual interface while improving response speed at the same time.

Visualization is one of the major advantages of Talent Cloud. By real-time monitoring of surveillance cameras, data turbulence and server conditions, engineers could grasp the operation conditions of each Wanda Plaza in a quick and accurate manner.

Filling technological gap via the “topological structure”

At the end of 2016, Talent Cloud Version 3.0 was officially launched. A key change is moving the separate Talent Cloud system in each plaza to the cloud, so that geographical boundaries of different Wanda Plazas were broken and that all the plazas were managed by IDC (International Data Corporation) in a unified manner.

This April, TMTPost issued a report and revealed the cooperation details between IBM and Wanda. Although Talent Cloud is built on a Hybrid Cloud platform inside Wanda, it’s still not enough to support Wanda’s other businesses, including Feifan e-commerce, finance, etc. Therefore, it’s natural that Wanda still has a huge demand for cloud business, internally.

Externally, however, with over 100 brands and stores and a daily passenger flow of over 10,000, Wanda itself becomes a big target client of cloud services. While Wanda is in dire need of cloud services, IBM needs Wanda’s nearly 200 plazas to test its variety of technologies. Therefore, their cooperation is more bout “each takes what one needs” than cross-sector cooperation.

According to Feng, Wanda’s cooperation strategy, that is, filling its own technological gap via external cooperation, is much like the “topological structure” in Computer Network Topology.In this sense, the cooperation with IBM is like a bigger node in the network, while cooperation with other small and mid-sized tech startups constitute smaller nodes. As a result, Wanda managed to go beyond points and into the surface and revolutionize the platform.

Feng Zhongqian, standing vice manager of Information Management Center of Wanda Group

Last November, a couple of products stood out at the IoT Acceleration Camp held by top-tier Silicon Valley incubator Plug and Play and won the opportunity to conduct Proof of Concept (POC) inside Wanda’s ecosystem.

For example, ZiFiSense, an IoT startup based in Shanghai, has been promoting ZETA, an industrial IoT networking technology that allows for lower power cost, wider connectivity range and quicker transmission speed than Wifi, Zigbee or bluetooth.

During the China SaaS Challenge co-held by TMTPost and ITValue, Feng Zhongqian, as one of the guest judges, also showed Wanda’s open-mindedness towards innovation as well as recognition of the great work other startups had done in sectors like APM, AI and industrial IoT.

Wanda’s IBMS is smart, but not intelligent?

For veteran employees at Wanda, it was almost impossible to cooperate with tech startups. On the one hand, while Wanda Plazas have huge demand, tech startups often lack the ability to apply their technology in large scales; on the other hand, Wanda is, after all, not an internet company, so there simply isn’t much room for trial and error, as is also explained by Feng.

However, with the introduction of Talent Cloud and the cooperation with IBM, Wanda has created a huge demand gap in the technical field, which has also kept driving Feng and the entire Information Management Center to find their own style and pace inside a “militarized” and “strictly-organized” company.