Now what do you mean by the middle platform, Ali middle platform?

The so-called "middle office" is not the first word proposed by Alibaba, and in a literal sense, the middle office is based on the front office and the back office. Through years of unremitting efforts, Alibaba has accumulated its technology and business capabilities into a comprehensive capability platform with the continuous catalysis and nourishment of its business, and has the ability to respond quickly to changes and innovations in front-end business.

The middle platform refers to the intermediate platform within the enterprise, which is a unified data and business processing platform that serves various business lines within the enterprise. The concept of middle platform originates from the e-commerce industry, which refers to a kind of core business model source and data abstraction and unification.

1. A standardized mode of providing services to the outside world. Now, the concept of middle office has been widely applied to various industries, such as finance, manufacturing, etc.

The main role of the middle office is to break the vertical isolation of business within the enterprise, realize data and resource sharing, collaboration and integration between various business lines, so as to improve business efficiency and reduce costs. The middle platform can integrate data and business processing between different business lines, provide standardized interfaces and services, and enable the interconnection between various systems within the enterprise, so as to realize the digital transformation and business collaboration of the entire enterprise.

In short, the middle office is a model that integrates, standardizes, and services the data and business processing of various business lines within the enterprise, so as to achieve the effect of collaboration, sharing, and efficiency improvement.

While the number of users is growing, Alibaba has been trying to develop a middle-office strategy, that is, to build a middle layer on the platform architecture, so that various businesses can better share resources and services. However, with the development of the business and the intensification of competition, Ali eventually had to abandon the middle office strategy.

The problem of excessive concentration of the middle office.

One obvious problem is that in the case of an overly centralized middle office, it is difficult to troubleshoot and fix failures or errors quickly and easily. Not only does this cause business disruption, but it also affects the user experience. In addition, the centralized architecture of the middle office may also lead to performance bottlenecks, because all business functions are concentrated in the middle office, which makes resources unevenly distributed and limits the speed of business expansion to a certain extent.

It is difficult for the middle office to meet business needs.

In addition, Alibaba gradually realized that it was difficult for the middle office to meet the differentiated needs of various business lines. Different business lines have their own products, technology systems, and business models, and it is difficult to achieve rapid iteration under the middle office system. In response to different business needs, Alibaba is forced to develop independent products and technology systems for each business line, which in turn brings greater complexity and maintenance costs.

Business innovation is restricted.

Another problem is that due to the existence of the middle platform, Ali has been limited in business innovation. Because the middle office needs to consider the sharing of resources and services between various business lines, there are sometimes certain constraints in business innovation. If a new business requirement conflicts with the current middle office technical architecture, Alibaba needs to make trade-offs, and may lose some business opportunities in the decision.

Find a new direction of development.

Abandoning the middle office strategy does not mean that Alibaba has given up on technological innovation and business development. On the contrary, in response to the above problems, Alibaba began to gradually shift to a "microservice" architecture to create a more flexible and scalable technical system to provide infrastructure and support for various business lines. The microservice architecture divides the original complex monolithic application into smaller units, each unit can be quickly developed, deployed and updated according to different business scenarios, and is also convenient for flexible combination to meet different business needs.

Epilogue. Just like Alibaba's decision to abandon the middle office strategy, technology development is a process of constant change and innovation, and the choice of technology should also be weighed according to specific business development and application scenarios. Alibaba's technical practice is also worth learning from and thinking about by other enterprises, and looking for a new development direction that is more suitable for their own business.

Zhongtai, signed by the ancient official, that is, Shangshu Province.

The Qin and Han fashion books are called Zhongtai, the confessors are called Waitai, and the imperial history is called Xiantai, which is collectively called Santai. The Wei, Jin, Song and Qi dynasties were called Shangshutai, and the Liang and Chen dynasties and the Northern Qi and Sui were called Shangshu Province. In the Tang Dynasty, it was renamed Zhongtai, and later changed to Shangshu Province.

Refer to the "Beginner's Notes: Shangshu Order". "Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Wu Zhi, Zhuge Ke Biography": "Therefore, the officials of the Central and Taiwan Centers were sent to welcome the gifts, to make meritorious contributions, and to comfort the labor.

Tang Hanyu's poem "Ma Shilang of the Gift Department": "The red flag shines on the sea and presses the southern wilderness, and he is recruited into Zhongtai as a waiter." "Song Su Shunqing's "Du Gong's Official Table":

Looking for his life, he entered the official middle stage. ”

Official's signature. Ying Shao's "Han Guanyi" said that the Han called Shangshutai the middle platform. In the second year of Tang Longshuo (662), the official name was changed, and on this basis, Shangshu Province was changed to Zhongtai.

In the first year of Xianheng (680), the name was restored in winter. In the third year of Chang'an (703), it was changed to Zhongtai. In the first year of Shenlong (705), Zhongzong reverted to the throne and then reverted to the name.

The meaning of Zhongtai:

1. That is, Shangshu Province.

2. Internal transport is chaotic. In ancient times, when the Son of Heaven met the princes, it was a platform set up for the princes. It is divided into internal and external platforms, and the inner platform is more noble than the outer platform.

3. In the old days, the secondary actors performed the opening scene first, and then the main actors performed the original play, which was called the middle stage.

4. Star name. 5. Since the Han Dynasty, with three stations as the position of the three dukes, the middle platform is more than Situ or Sikong, and then it has become the name of Situ or Sikong to accompany the answer.

6. Internet terminology, generally applied to large enterprises. Generally, it refers to building a flexible and rapid response to changes, quickly realizing the needs of the front-end, avoiding duplicate construction, and achieving the purpose of improving work efficiency.

The type of middle office

Business middle office: Most of them are traditional cost centers, which integrate the resources of the back office into the "middleware" needed by the front office to fight wars, which is convenient to be called on demand. Typical business middle platforms include ByteDance's live broadcast middle platform, Tencent's technology middle platform, etc.

The "business middle office" is also known as the "tangible middle office" because there are physical departments.

Data middle platform: It should be called "digitization of the business middle platform", which allows resources and capabilities to form data collection after extreme sharing, and makes intelligent decisions based on algorithms to support the operation of the business middle platform and the organizational middle platform.

Organizational middle office: A team composed of business partners sent to the front office by departments such as finance, human resources, and strategy.

The bp team will enter the small team in the front office and work together with a professional perspective, while also allocating resources and policies efficiently on behalf of the back office. The "organizational middle office" is also known as the "invisible middle office" because there is no physical department, like water, pervasively infiltrating every business unit.

The middle office is a new type of enterprise data group and management system.

The core idea is to store, manage and communicate different forms and types of content within the enterprise in a unified manner. In this way, users from different departments can quickly obtain the information, documents and knowledge points they need without spending a lot of time looking for them.

The middle office can also share data with external vendors, customers and other stakeholders, which greatly improves the collaboration and innovation capabilities of enterprises.

For example:Reading stream enterprise middle platformIt can help enterprises to efficiently manage massive digital assets, comprehensively control the production process of item skins, and quickly match content production services, greatly reducing the management cost and outsourcing cost of enterprise content materials.

The main functions of the middle office include data management, data governance, data exchange, data openness, etc.

Data management is the core of the content middle platform, which realizes the integration and bridge management of various business data within the enterprise through data management.

Data governance focuses on the standardization, cleaning, and verification of different data to ensure accurate and reliable data.

Data exchange refers to the sharing of information between different business systems to achieve the purpose of data circulation.

Data openness is to open the internal data resources of the enterprise to the outside world, and promote the interaction and cooperation between the enterprise and the external ecological environment.

For example, the enterprise middle platform can help enterprises efficiently manage massive digital assets, comprehensively control the project production process, and quickly match content production services, which greatly reduces the management cost and external procurement cost of enterprise content materials.

Does the landlord refer to the concept of "middle platform" first proposed by Ali? If it is, the concept of the middle platform is similar to the company's information integration and sharing platform, let's take a chestnut, take a larger company as an example, because each business has a special department to be responsible, the formation of the corresponding department is responsible for the corresponding business, and when there are more and more businesses, there will be more and more departments and organizations, or multiple businesses will be merged into a department, and over time they will form their own information barriers, because everyone thinks that they are the leader, and the role of the middle office is to break the information barrier. By centralizing and sharing the information of all departments of the company in the middle office, the company can see the blind spots of the strategy by formulating various strategies as a whole, and avoid some departments from over-grasping resources.