"3, 2, 1, power down!"
24 december 2025, chengdu, very cold. In sichuan farmer's data center, a group of people are on the move as if it were a warm spring。
At 1817 hours, when the signal for the last ibm large mainframe went out, the applause struck。
This means that sichuan farmer's bank became the first financial institution in the country to achieve a massive power outage, as well as the first provincial agricultural comptoir to do so。
Liu wei gwang, senior vice-president of the aliyun smart group and president of the public clouds department, woke up with a glimpse of the leadership of the information technology division of the sichuan farmers' union bank, as well as of the state of mind, who did not realize that the initial meeting had taken eight years to achieve it。
Over the past eight years, nearly a thousand people have stepped in。
These eight years, rewrite the code for each line, over 30 pb data。
Over the past eight years, 70 million clients and hundreds of millions of accounts have moved smoothly。
There are more than a dozen banks on ibm's main machine, not only state-owned and system-critical banks, but also sichuan farmer's bank in southwest china
This is not only the replacement of the distributed cloud computing architecture with the centralized traditional it architecture, but also an idealist-driven technological change at the financial level。
Zero one
Since sichuan is china's population and labour-exporting province, sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce plays an irreplaceable role in supporting the māori and the economic and social development of the province。
Given the importance and size of sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce, it and jiangsu bank of commerce and industry are the only two provincial financial institutions with core business systems on board ibm。
Objectively, the prevalence of ibms has been justified over a period of time. With its near-dominant stability, the large machines guard the central data lifeline of banks。
But in the world of technology, there has never been any static。
By the end of 2017, the sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce had shaken its trust in the ibm machine。
During the spring festival, the sichuan agricultural bank's data centre unexpectedly sounded alarms when a single payment was made to the country, when workers from sichuan province returned to their homes, along with substantial amounts of money。
On the monitor screen, real-time transactions surged instantly. The use of cpus for large machines in the core hub has gone a long way, touching 98 per cent of the red line at once。
The sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce team had to gather in full and the alarms and telephone bells were ringing, which was the cry of the traditional technological architecture in the face of the flood。
At that moment, the leadership of the sichuan union bank of farmers was deeply aware that the “ceiling” of the traditional technological architecture had reached its peak。
They have stood at a crossroads where choices must be made. Driven by rural revitalization and the digital economy, county operations have surged, trade volumes have doubled and closed and expensive large machines have become unsustainable。
"at the time, the large machine was like an expensive "black box" and the application system was closely aligned with the bottom platform, with a very high development iterative threshold." the head of the science and technology research and development department of the sichuan federation of farmers and businessmen bank。
According to industry reports by agencies such as idc at the time, large machine shut-down hardware and old cobol language were placing banks in a “technical lock-up” trap, with expensive vertical expansion (scale-up) costs overburdening many institutions。
At the same time, cloud computing as a “breaker” was pushed to the stage. With distributed structures, horizontal expansion (scale-out) capabilities and a pay-as-you-go model, the idc reports that financial institutions have experienced a significant reduction in the cost of it transportation, while reducing the start-up cycle of new operations from months to weeks。
But it's easy。
As a provincial agricultural trust, which covers 48 legal entities throughout sichuan province and serves 70 million clients, every turn-over of sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce has been significant. Financial operations impose stringent requirements for data consistency and high availability, and any minor vibrations can trigger a butterfly effect。
“at that time, few banks in the country dared to run the core system in full on a distributed cloud platform.” the head of the scientific and technological research and development department of the sichuan federation of farmers and businesses (sichuan bank). The choice of a full cloud is tantamount to a high-speed "blindness" in an unmanned zone without reference。
Despite the challenges, the sichuan bank of agriculture and industry is well known and unbreakable。
In january 2018, after several rounds of intensive validation by organizing experts, from the lowest-tech logic to the financial-grade security base, and after a full-scale modelling and evolution, the sichuan united banking commission made a very bold decision that seemed to be taking at that time: to skip the middle of the technological evolution and go straight to the full-scale cloud structure with the determination to “go to the host”。
In march 2018, liu wei gwang led zhang zhang (now general manager of the new financial business of the aliyun smart group), among others, and knocked on the sichuan farmer bank for the first time to talk about a platform for moving down and spreading clouds。
Based on a deep consensus on technological trends, sichuan agrobank finally firmly chose to stand with aliyun in the future。
It is interesting to note that, in addition to the technical details of the negotiations, the sichuan bank of agriculture and commerce and aliyun have had the greatest interest in the interview。
After all, in the year when cloud computing was not yet the standard for industry, full cloud coverage was a possible “effective” scenario, and no one had a standard answer, but they were keen to know that once it was done, it would be enough to influence the industry。
Zero-two
With regard to “offsets”, the top-level design of sichuan farmer's bank is extremely long and difficult。
Planning for the construction of “five nodes of the three four centres” (three for the three cities of chengdu, yaan and kanzhou; four for the four data centres of tou-soo, inshou-shou, ya'an and yan-yang; and five for the deployment of the five data copy and application systems, two for the ja'an data centres and one for each of the other three data centres) to meet system-wide computing needs。
Accordingly, a new generation of it structures based on operations, data and technology has been designed to create a “mixed cloud” with site-level and city-level disaster, as well as flexible resource allocation. There is no industry precedent。
This is destined to be a technological “long march”。
The banking sector has been recognized as a technology community, everest, and hundreds of millions of accounts have been moved without a half-miss。
According to zheng zheng zheng, the deputy director-general of the new financial sector of the aliyun smart group, a central challenge lies behind the project: the sichuan agricultural bank's core system has long been dependent on the availability of technology (e. G. Cics services, db2 database, cobol language), technology is heavily locked, business logic is deeply tied to the bottom platform, and solutions are extremely difficult. Restructure means that all structures must be “rewritten”。
With a view to smoothing down technical problems, ali yun has mobilized nearly a thousand people, isv has put hundreds of people in it, and sichuan farmer's bank has multiplied its scientific and technological team to form a multi-team team。
In the process of “disabling”, sichuan agrobank and aliyun did not choose “violence switch”, but rather developed a “carving-in” dynamic transition program like a precision surgery。
Step 1: a maximum test of over 100 “first-goers”
The relocation began with a “white list”. More than 100 co-builders of projects in the line took the lead in moving their accounts into the new system and conducted a two-month field test in the production environment. It's like before the new bridge goes through, the designers run their own focused trucks over and over again to ensure that the bridge is intact。
Step two: family zone exercises for tens of thousands of employees
Following the validation of the white list, the scope of the operation was extended to tens of thousands of workers across the line. In these 45 days, full-time staff became the first in-depth users of the new system. This is not only for the purpose of testing functionality, but also, in the context of the most realistic business scene, for the precise removal of any minor risks that could lead to production failure。
Step three: uninvited surgery without damage
Finally, it's an "outsideless strategy." discrepancies in the design of the new and old core were quietly eliminated through order conversion and data pooling. This means that, although the “heart” has changed, there is little need for large-scale surgery for other organs of the body (outside systems), which guarantees the absolute calm of operations throughout the province during the migration process。
It was not until 15 november 2025, when the new system was successfully launched and again baptized by a flood of more than a month's traffic, that 24 december was the time when electricity was “down”。
From the “down in the land” in 2018 to the “from the home” at the end of 2025, sichuan farmer's bank completed an epic migration。
03 magenta
“downing” is just an action, a change in the quality of operations supported by the “trust clouds”, and is the most dangerous resonance of the technological long march。
Behind the "trust cloud", sichuan farmer's bank provides a rate of confidence between "40 seconds" and "1. 5 trillion."。
In the past, farmers in remote mountainous areas had to wait three to seven days to apply for an inclusive loan on their mobile phones, from submission to approval. Today, thanks to the powerful distributed calculus of the “trust cloud”, the boxing product “trust-e” has achieved a process-wide self-service, with automatic machine approvals of up to 80 per cent。
"the time of the loan is now about 40 seconds." according to the head of the science and technology research and development department of the sichuan bank for farmers and industry. Since the start of production, the cumulative credit for the product series has reached 1. 59 trillion, making it a truly inclusive financial “time-on-time rain” that will solve the problem of loans。
The release of this effectiveness has not been at the expense of security. On the other hand, while improving financial “accessibility”, the “trust cloud” has created an invisible digital defence line for 70 million clients across the province。
When large-volume transactions rush to the moving end, the system's co-processing capacity is nearly 10 times higher than in the past. Even late at night, there is a 7x24-hour service of intelligent robots, which receives more than 49 million incoming lines. And in the invisible backstage, 38 anti-power fraud intelligence models are running at all times, bringing down significantly the ranking of anti-power fraud cases and guarding the “money bags” of users。
Full autonomy from bottom operating systems, distributed databases to upper levels of application, allowing sichuan farmer bank toDigital transformationIt won a radical strategic initiative。
Today, zhu xinguang is the country's first multi-purpose provincial agro-trust core system, with a cross-geographical disaster and second-level switch-over capability, meeting the highest available standards at the financial level。
Monitoring data indicate that data are fast, with a threefold increase in the system's core processing capacity; low costs, with a significant decrease in single transaction costs; and high security, with the cloud floor remaining at a serviceability rate of over 99. 99 per cent. Even in the face of extreme disasters, the system can achieve a five-minute pass-through to ensure zero data loss and zero accounting errors。
Sichuan farmer bank and aliyun’s idealists have not been failed。
Although sichuan farmer's bank is a regional financial institution, technology has not sunk as much as its counterparts in the first platoon, thanks to the refining of the “big downward” project。
“the project has created a sophisticated and efficient technical team of over 100 people.” the head of the science and technology research and development department of the sichuan farmers ' union bank said that the team covered the entire chain from business modelling, system re-engineering to stress testing and self-rehabilitation. This leap from “deep reliance on the plant” to “key technology ownership” has allowed sichuan agricultural bank to take the lead in strategic ownership of future financial chess。
According to incomplete statistics from arrion, there are now more than 10 banking partners that have initiated or planned clouding of core systems。
The sichuan farmer's bank's “big downwards” project is equally significant for aliyun。
Zheng zheng said: “the project is the first national cloud platform to support the provincial agribusiness core system in its full cloudy form, which comprehensively validates the reliability and maturity of aliyun's financial-grade, distributed cloudhouses in a very large-scale, high-mixed and cohesive landscape. The series of self-study products has performed well in the field, consolidating aliyun's technological credibility and market competitiveness in the financial sector.”
Aliyun's long-standing doctrine has also borne fruit, and he has been at the top of the chinese financial cloud market for six consecutive years since 2019。
New journey 04
At the beginning of the “155,” sichuan farmer's bank looked from the “cloud” to the “wise”。
With the full capacity of ariyun, the “trust cloud” is accelerating from the “lunnas” to the “aiborns”. This is not a simple upgrading of terminology, but a restructuring of productivity, and sichuan farmer's bank will accelerate the emergence of a large financial model system that promotes exclusive integration on the south-west。
Based on the large financial model provided by toriyun, sichuan farmer's bank is planning to integrate financial logic with algorithms to create a “business, rule, risk” intelligence hub. This means that future credit approvals will be more “temperature” and “accuracy”, and risk monitoring will have a “pregnant” sense of smell。
In 2018, aliyun shook hands for the first time with sichuan farmer bank. At that time, aliyun was defunct in financial markets, while sichuan farmer's bank was exploring new paths to a technological breakthrough。
In 2026, ali yun, with the strength of ai, took 80 per cent of china's ai yun plus market, while sichuan farmer's bank made great strides towards “the three major banks” (bank of compliance, bank of wisdom, bank of major military power)。
The new technology, the long march, sounded the horn。
