Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China’s Alibaba Group, has announced the opening of four new data centres by the end of 2016 in the Dubai, Europe, Australia and Japan.
As a major milestone of Alibaba Cloud’s global expansion, the new centres will boost its data centre network to 14 locations, covering key economic centres around the world.
The data centre in the Middle East, located in Dubai, commenced initial operations on Monday, a statement said.
Alibaba Cloud is the first major global public cloud services provider to offer cloud services from a local data centre in the Middle East.
The opening of the Dubai Data Centre, in conjunction with YVOLV, will support and drive Dubai’s Smart City vision by leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s cloud computing technologies to create new applications and big-data tools for customers in the region.
The new data centres will support Alibaba Cloud’s growing client base beyond the current 2.3 million, the statement added.
Simon Hu, president of Alibaba Cloud, said: “Alibaba Cloud has contributed significantly to China’s technology advancement, establishing critical commerce infrastructure to enable cross-border businesses, online marketplaces, payments, logistics, cloud computing and big data to work together seamlessly.
“We want to establish cloud computing as the digital foundation for the new global economy using the opportunities of cloud computing to empower businesses of all sizes across all markets,” he added.
“The four new data centres will further expand Alibaba Cloud’s global ecosystem and footprint, allowing us to meet the increasing demand for secure and scalable cloud computing services from businesses and industries worldwide,” said Ethan Yu, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global.
