Alibaba has added another Agent for horse racing

On September 2nd, Alibaba launched another Agent product. The name is’ Boundless Everything ‘.

According to Alibaba Cloud’s definition, this is an enterprise level “human agent collaboration platform”. Complex tasks can be delegated to multiple agents, with both individuals and agents participating in the project, and the process and results ultimately settling into the enterprise account.

In the past, one agent worked for people, but now it’s a group of agents working together.

The direction is not unexpected, what is unexpected is time. A month ago, Alibaba just integrated a round of agents.

QoderWork, MuleRun, and Wukong from the DingTalk system have been reintegrated into the Qianwen office. One is responsible for computer operations, another emphasizes cloud execution, and the other relies on enterprise collaboration. Three different routes were ultimately put under “Qianwen”.

It looks like a gag. A month later, Boundless Everything appeared.

From a product definition perspective, they are different. Qianwen Office focuses on office work, Wanwujie emphasizes collaboration between people and multiple agents, Bailian is oriented towards developers, and DingTalk holds the organizational relationship of the enterprise.

Each one has its own place. There are also reasons for their continued existence.

Alibaba has always been good at horse racing
Alibaba is no stranger to horse racing. When the market is unclear, let different teams run forward at the same time, and finally hand over the answer to users and business results. Compared to betting on the future from the beginning, this is a more realistic approach for large companies.

Agents are particularly suitable for horse racing. Because to this day, there is still no standard answer to what an enterprise agent should be.

It can be hidden in a chat box, operated on a computer, accessed into office software, or become a new entry point on top of the software.

Ali has enough cards in his hands. Qianwen has models, Alibaba Cloud has computing power and enterprise customers, DingTalk has organizational relationships, and Bailian connects developers. In the era of agents, every business has the opportunity to take a step forward.

So QoderWork can do it, Wukong can do it, MuleRun can do it too. Later, they synthesized the Thousand Questions Office, and now there is the Boundless Universe.

This does not necessarily mean that the previous integration failed. When every team in a company has the ability to act as an agent, ‘who will do it’ is never the most difficult question.

The difficult part is who doesn’t do it.

The truly troublesome horse race for large companies often occurs here: it’s not that there are no good products, but that behind each horse, there is a sufficient set of reasons for its establishment.

Alibaba now has many reasons like this. There is still a missing answer that makes other reasons less important.

Does Cloud Need Agents More Than Enterprises
The future depicted as boundless is very tempting. In a future company, there will not only be employees, but also a large number of agents. Sales have agents, customer service has agents, procurement has agents, and finance also has agents.

Behind 1000 people, there may be thousands of AI running. For enterprises, this is productivity, and for cloud vendors, it is computational complexity.

Agents will not stay there quietly like traditional software. It needs to call the model, search for information, read the database, use APIs, and then hand over the task to another agent.

The busier the agent, the busier the cloud. This is a business that aligns well with the interests of Alibaba Cloud. Of course, as long as the enterprise earns more than it pays out, there is no problem with that.

The problem is that companies will not ultimately pay for the three words’ Agent ‘.

The boss will look at other numbers. How many fewer people were recruited, how much faster the process was, how much the cost was reduced, and how much more revenue was generated.

It’s easy to decide if an agent spends 1000 yuan and saves 5000 yuan. If it only requires employees to do five PPTs a day instead of three a day, things won’t be as sexy.

In the past two years, the AI industry has been best at proving that it can do it. Enterprise procurement will inevitably ask another question:

Why spend money to make it do?

When the agent truly enters the enterprise budget, this issue will be much more important than model parameters. Especially for a company that sells models, cloud, database, search, and agent platforms simultaneously.

The position of the nail
Compared to the boundlessness of everything, the position of DingTalk may be more worth seeing.

In the past few years, if Alibaba wanted to find an enterprise AI entrance, DingTalk was almost a ready-made answer.

The address book, approvals, workflow, permissions, and organizational relationships are all there. AI enters DingTalk, and DingTalk becomes the entry point for enterprise agents, which is a smooth path.

But now, things have changed a bit. Wukong was merged into Qianwen Office, and Qianwen Office then entered DingTalk; Alibaba Cloud has its own Agent platform, with Bailian responsible for developers and Qianwen increasingly approaching the unified brand of Alibaba AI.

Previously, AI entered DingTalk. Now, DingTalk is also entering AI.

The organizational relationships, permissions, and workflows accumulated by DingTalk over the past decade are still important, but they may gradually move from where users can see them to behind the Agent.

The entrance has not disappeared. Just in front of the entrance, there is an additional layer, which may be a good thing for Alibaba.

It’s still difficult to say what DingTalk means.

Who will end the horse race
From Qianwen to Alibaba Cloud, from Bailian to DingTalk, and then to Qianwen Office and Boundless Everything, Alibaba is putting more and more resources into agents.

Each piece can find its own place. This is also where the problem lies.

In the early stages of the market, having a few more horses was not a bad thing. No one knows where the finish line is, running a few more routes is even safer.

But the truly difficult part of horse racing is never making the horse run. But after the competition reaches a certain stage, it decides who doesn’t need to run anymore.

QoderWork、 Wukong and MuleRun have already experienced such a choice once.

Now Wanwujie has returned to the track. Perhaps it will come out, perhaps the Qianwen office meeting, perhaps the true entrance still belongs to DingTalk, or even perhaps these names may not be as important in the end.

It’s too early now. Just the number of horses in Alibaba’s hands has been increasing.

The next horse may not be the rarest thing.