Dell has joined a growing number of foreign tech firms looking to extend their presence in the Chinese market through local cloud services.
The U.S. company announced the launch of a new Dell-backed cloud services company called Guizhou YottaCloud Technologies on Thursday at a big data summit in Guizhou attended by CEO Michael Dell.
Dell will offer technical and financial support to the company, which will act a vehicle to sell Dell’s cloud services to small and medium-sized businesses. The company declined to release any financial details of the arrangement.
While tensions between foreign tech firms and the Chinese government have been simmering over IP issues, hardware and cloud infrastructure are relatively uncontroversial, attracting more rigorous foreign investment.
This week Microsoft announced the launch of their second China accelerator in Shanghai, focussing on cloud computing, AI and big data. Amazon’s AWS cloud services branch launched a similar accelerator two years ago. Local tech firms are also pouring money into the hotly-contested industry. In May this year Lenovo launched a $500 million USD fund for startups in AI and cloud industries.
Dell’s latest investment is part of a strategy dubbed ‘In China, For China’ by CEO Michael Dell. In September last year the company pledged to spend $125 billion on expanding their China operations, including “closely integrat[ing] Dell China strategies with national policies.”
