Alibaba Group has launched a slew of cloud products for the global market and earmarked Asia-Pacific as a priority region for growth. And while it is a comparatively young player in the international cloud scene, the Chinese internet giant is playing up its youth, regional datacentre footprint as well as global product releases--such as Anti-Bot Service--as key differentiators against the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google.
Recognised more widely for its e-commerce[1] prowess, Alibaba first launched its cloud business in China almost a decade ago in 2009. It was only in 2015 that Alibaba Cloud expanded its availability beyond the Chinese market, setting up its international headquarters in Singapore[2] and pledging US$1 billion in investment[3]. The funds were to go towards expanding its datacentre footprint as well as building up its partner ecosystem and developing new cloud offerings.
Three years later, this week, Alibaba Cloud debuted nine products outside its domestic market and launched its Asean Partner Alliance Programme, the latter of which aimed to enrol 150 technology partners and train 600 sales and technology professionals over the next 12 months.
Asked about competition with AWS and Google, considering Alibaba's rather late entry into the cloud market, chief cloud architect of Alibaba Cloud International, Derek Wang, described the company's youth a good trait especially in the technology industry.
And while its cloud business might be young in the international market, Alibaba already had been nurturing its cloud abilities in China since 2009, said Wang, who spoke with ZDNet on the sidelines of the company's cloud summit in Singapore.
He added that, compared to the likes of Google and AWS, Alibaba had more data centres in the Asia-Pacific