Alibaba Earmarks US$1 Billion for Cloud Investment Across Asia Pacific
Alibaba Group has ranked third globally and first in the Asia Pacific region in the global Infrastructure-as-a-Service market, according to reports by consultancy Gartner[1]. Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, has pledged to invest an initial US$1 billion supporting talent and start-ups across the Asia Pacific region over the next three years.
Alibaba Cloud grew out of the group’s need to operate at scale and address the core commerce business’s complexity, including payments and logistics. In 2009, the group founded Alibaba Cloud to make these technologies available to third-party customers. It offers cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services.
Alibaba Cloud recently launched its first data center in the Philippines[2], built an innovation center in Malaysia[3], and officially launched the third data center in Indonesia. The chunky investment into the region is the largest by Alibaba Group this financial year, underscoring the group’s confidence in the region’s digital transformation.
“We are committed to bettering the region’s cloud ecosystem and enhancing its digital infrastructure,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Focusing on the APAC market, Alibaba Cloud also recently launched an e-commerce livestreaming solution for merchants to reach shoppers digitally. The solution guarantees image quality while reducing bit rates, enabling a high-resolution livestreaming experience with low bandwidth costs. Users can enjoy livestreams with a latency of around two seconds, essential to the experience of flash sales.
Low latency is critical across Southeast Asia where the digital infrastructure is nascent, but where policymakers are keen to see greater economic and financial inclusion that internet connections offer their citizens. Southeast Asia’s internet sector is poised to grow to over US$300 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025, said Google and Singapore’s Temasek in a widely cited report.
Livestreaming e-commerce solutions are quickly evolving as a response to increasing demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. Retailers globally have flocked to China, where the economy rebounded relatively quickly from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and adopted digital tools to reach shoppers.
“Innovative technology is critical to the recovery from Covid-19,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Built upon Alibaba Cloud’s extensive content delivery networks with over 2,800 nodes in more than 70 countries and regions, the livestreaming solution leverages the cloud real-time video processing technology to ensure an uninterrupted signal transfer between sellers, buyers and the nearest distribution center.
Alibaba Cloud has operations and offices in the UK supporting UK businesses grow across the APAC market. Please reach out to our representative for more information:
Alan Shen, Director, Alibaba Cloud UK
Email: [email protected]
Address: 8th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP
