Alibaba Cloud, also known as AliCloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, announced on Monday the opening of four new overseas data centers. The data centers will be located in the Middle East (Dubai), Europe (Germany), Australia, and Japan.
AliCloud services will also reach those lands, where customers will have access to Alibaba’s data storage and analytics services, enterprise-level middleware, and cloud security services.
The data center located in Dubai commenced its initial operations on Monday. The other three will be opened by the end of 2016, expanding the data center network of Alibaba to 14 locations, including six within China and eight overseas.
“The four new data centers will further expand AliCloud’s global ecosystem and footprint, allowing us to meet the increasing demand for secure and scalable cloud computing services from business and industries worldwide,” said Ethan Yu, VP of Alibaba Group and general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global.
According to Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud has been working with global partners such as Softbank, Intel, Vodafone Germany, and the Dubai-based Meraas Holdings. In this way, Alibaba Cloud is able to leverage their partners’ resources to secure local customers, and provide localized services to customers in markets including the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Korea.
With a client base of over 2.3 million, Alibaba Cloud reported revenue of RMB 1.5 billion (USD 224 million) in the last quarter, up 130 percent YoY. As its global expansion proceeds, the cloud service provider is expected to compete with the leading global players in the field – Amazon and Microsoft.
Yu said, “The first priority of Alicloud is to continue expanding into new markets, on the premise of maintaining our leading position.”
(Top photo from Baidu Images)