When the world’s fifth largest internet company presents you with an award, you enjoy the moment and prepare to thank those who made it happen and where we go from here.

During a private ceremony with its suppliers, the Alibaba Procurement Department recognized its leading partners for excellence in four different categories. Alibaba recently named Micron its Delivery Partner of the Year, out of 2,000 suppliers. Our responsiveness and ability to effectively meet Alibaba’s requirements earned Micron the distinction in the delivery category.

The key? Collaboration and providing unique value. As our Enterprise Sales Vice President Mark Glasgow noted, “This award is a reflection of considerable effort and collaboration across Micron, from the account and field systems engineering leads servicing Alibaba, to our Storage and Compute and Networking Business Units, to our supply chain and operations teams. Delivery is one of the most important factors to be a long-term strategic partner with Alibaba so this reflects the relationship we’ve built and indicates a very bright future.”

A unique business model that combines e-commerce, cloud computing and more, Alibaba is one of the largest etailers in the world. The common thread to all of its operations is data. Micron’s memory and storage solutions, ranging from SSDs to DRAM, support Alibaba’s infrastructure system to operate various businesses in its ecosystem in an efficient way. Alibaba also uses Micron DRAM products in its data centers.

Taking the time and being able to understand their data center workload issues has really set Micron apart from other suppliers with Alibaba. Our technical team can speak their language, moving beyond the basic speeds and feeds to truly understand the needs to deliver the right solution. This provides unique value to them, and this award is a reflection of building these relationships, supported by a strong mix of technical expertise, market knowledge and the right solutions.