Alibaba Cloud races ahead with global expansion, adds 3 more countries to its portfolio

Alibaba Cloud’s data center in Dubai commences initial operations today. Photo credit: Sam valadi.

Alibaba is going hard for the global cloud industry. Today, its cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud (previously Aliyun) announced that four new data centers would open by the end of 2016. That would add three new regions to its rapidly expanding portfolio: Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.

“By having all these data centers […] we can expand our reach to more local markets and serve our global customers’ requirements,” Ethan Yu, vice president of Alibaba Cloud, tells Tech in Asia. In particular, these data centers will reduce network latency for Alibaba Cloud’s customers, helping them serve their end users and infrastructure needs, he says.

Dubai, Frankfurt, Sydney, and Tokyo will house Alibaba Cloud’s new data centers. According to the company, these locations were selected in part for their strategic importance as economic and trading centers.

In addition, Alibaba Cloud has already established local partnerships in three of the four locations to help drive customer acquisition. In Tokyo and Dubai, Alibaba Cloud has joint ventures with SoftBank and Meraas Holdings, respectively. In Sydney, Alibaba Cloud will work with German telecommunications company Vodafone to co-locate its data center in Vodafone’s data facilities.

By the end of 2016, Alibaba Cloud will have data centers in 14 locations across mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Europe, the US, and the Middle East. Next year, Alibaba Cloud’s global expansion will continue as the company plans to open more data centers in other countries, says Ethan.

No ecommerce without good cloud

The Chinese tech company’s cloud coverage is catching up with that of its Western competitors, like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure. Last year, the Chinese tech giant added data centers in the US and Singapore to its growing overseas portfolio. Alibaba Cloud currently serves 2.3 million customers worldwide.

However, it’s worth noting that although Amazon Web Services has fewer users, its revenue hit US$2.9 billion in the second quarter of this year. In contrast, Alibaba Cloud’s revenue for the same quarter was US$94 million.

Cloud computing is becoming an increasingly essential pillar of Alibaba’s multi-billion-dollar businesses, which include ecommerce and logistics. For this year’s Singles Day, China’s largest shopping holiday, Alibaba Cloud processed 175,000 transactions per second at peak traffic.

It’s also a key growth area for the Chinese tech giant. In the quarter ending this September, Alibaba Cloud’s revenue increased 130 percent to US$224 million, a triple-digit year-on-year growth for the sixth quarter in a row.

Converted from Chinese yuan. Rate: US$1 = RMB 6.90.

This post Alibaba Cloud races ahead with global expansion, adds 3 more countries to its portfolio appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/alibaba-cloud-races-global-expansion-adds-3-countries-portfolio
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