Chinese Smart Retailer Suning Unveils New 'RaaS' Strategy at CES 2019 to Boost the Digitalization of Retail Industry

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Suning, the commercial giant ranked second in China's top non-state-owned enterprises and owners of Suning.com, a Fortune Global 500 retail company, today unveiled its new 'Retail as a Service' ('RaaS' for short) based on its Smart Retail strategy at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, to empower the future development of the industry.

Suning’s booth at CES 2019

Regarded as the 'Brain' of Smart Retail – the strategy is in essence an open-platform model through which partners can access Suning's portfolio of long-term accumulated technology capabilities and omni-channel operation experience, including:

• SaaS (Software as a Service) -- based on the consumer-oriented R&D practices, Suning has achieved the commercial applications of AI, IoT and big data across the whole business process, such as Personalized Products Recommendation, Digital Store, Smart Home Service.
• PaaS (Platform as a Service) -- consists of Suning's AI platform, big data platform and over 80 business engines. The AI platform is operated by 3 foundational algorithm platforms to support more than 150 AI skills and over 80 retail scenarios, while the big data platform could collect, process and distribute more than 600 million users' information generated from over 2,000 retail service scenarios, along with 15 billion data calculations per day.
• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) -- Suning has completed the infrastructure construction which contains computing, storage, networking, IDC (Internet Data Centre) and micro service facilities to strongly support the industrial leading ecosystem.
• HaaS (Know-How as a Service) -- Suning owns 5 R&D centres and 35 solution sites both at home and overseas. A brilliant talent team of more than 10,000 experts has been established to continuously provide the latest and most innovative technical knowledge for exploring the future trends and opportunities of the industry.

Dr Jack Jing, COO of Suning Technology Group, said: "As the largest omni-channel retailer in China, we know that smart retail is the key to attracting and satisfying consumers in the digitalized era. We want to work with more partners in the industry to open up access to data, tech and tools, which can help them better understand their users and achieve business goals. That's what the 'Retail as a Service' ('RaaS') strategy is all about."

Dr. Jack Jing, COO of Suning Technology Group published the ‘RaaS’ strategy

Suning's 'RaaS' strategy now offers the industrial practitioners such as manufacturers, SME retailers and even tech developers or service providers an integrated solution to enhance both operational efficiencies and costumer experience.

To further promote this strategy, Suning has announced cooperations with a number of industrial partners -- GaiaWorks, Ecovacs Robotics, and SenseTime, the world's most valuable AI unicorn and the largest pure-play AI company -- to deepen the development and extend application scenarios of the solution.

In the meantime, with nearly 30 years of both online and offline retail experience, Suning also announced that it will open the software source of its smart retail ecosystem at CES 2019. It aims to enable SMEs to share the technology advantage of larger enterprises, to increase operation capability and efficiency. Suning started applying its shared in-store management and operation system to its Retail Cloud Programme which was launched in 2018 to empower the small- and middle-sized retail franchises in Tier 4-6 cities of China and achieved remarkable results within the year. By allowing access to Suning's smart retail ecosystem, there are now over 2,000 Suning Retail Cloud Stores nationwide equipped with Suning's RaaS business engines.

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Suning's booth is located at Booth 26030 at LVCC S2 Area.

About Suning

Founded in 1990, Suning is one of the leading commercial enterprises in China with two public companies in China and Japan. In 2018, Suning Holdings ranked second among the top 500 non-state owned enterprises in China with annual revenues of 80.85 billion USD (557.9 billion RMB). With the mission of "Leading the Ecosystem across Industries by Creating Elite Quality of Life for All", Suning has strengthened and expanded its core business through eight vertical industries: Suning.com, Logistics, Financial Services, Technology, Real Estate, Sports, Media & Entertainment, and Investment. Suning.com is listed on the 2018 Fortune Global 500. For more information see www.suningholdings.com

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