Alibaba Group has made an announcement of investing $1 billion in its cloud computing division Aliyun in an effort to set up data centres in Singapore, the Middle East, Japan and Europe.
This move will put Aliyun in direct competition with the successful Amazon Web Services.
Commenting on the matter, Alibaba Group Chief Executive Officer Daniel Zhang stated, “This $1 billion investment is just the beginning; our hope is for Aliyun to continually empower customers and partners with new capabilities, and help companies upgrade their basic infrastructure.”
Also, Aliyun has confirmed its partnership with Chinese software vendor Yonyou which happens to be the largest independent software enterprise in the Asia Pacific region.
In May, a joint venture with Dubai-based holding company Meraas marked Aliyun’s first foray into the Middle East. The partnership focussed on developing private infrastructure and a technology hub.
In march, Aliyun launched Founders+, a programme for aiding startups, offering them with capital anywhere from $4,800 to $64,000 for cloud-based training as well as a free work office, reports e27.
