Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group announced that it will invest an additional $1 billion USD into cloud computing arm Aliyun, in an attempt to beef up its global presence, improve R&D capacity and foster partnerships with local data technology companies.
The investment is intended to set up a global network for Aliyun with new centers in Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Europe, the company said. Aliyun now has six public data centers in Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Silicon Valley.
Along with the investment, Aliyun has also entered new strategic partnership with Yonyou Software, a leading enterprise management software and cloud service provider in Asia Pacific region. Yongyou claims to have over 2 million government clients or enterprises customers engaged in finance, automobile, medical care and energy.
The tie-up will help Aliyun to capitalize on this customer resources. For the first stage of this cooperation, the partnership will primarily focus on enterprise cloud computing, big data, digital marketing, and e-commerce solutions, according to the company.
The news comes a week after Aliyun released a series of cloud-based services.
The move underlines the importance Alibaba attaches to cloud computing as a revenue driver. “Big Data and cloud computing are at the heart of Alibaba Group’s strategy for the future,” said Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang.
As foreign cloud services like Amazon Web Service and Microsoft’s Azure are exploring Chinese market, their domestic counterparts are also trying to expand beyond domestic market for global presence. In addition to Aliyun, Chinese cloud services like Tencent Cloud and UCloud also set eyes on overseas markets through constructing a global data center networks.
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