Alibaba Cloud rolls out US$30 million programme to help global small and medium enterprises amid Covid-19 pandemic

A support package of 12 key products will be open for application between Thursday and June 22 for new SMEs customers worldwide. Successful applicants will receive free cloud services for a limited period of time.

The package includes the company’s Elastic Compute Service, which powers cloud applications with low latency, the Object Storage Service, which offers encrypted data storage and backup in the cloud, as well as security products and Alibaba’s Web Application Firewall, according to a company statement on Thursday.

Alibaba’s existing SME customers will also receive product coupons to help them expand or upgrade their cloud applications, the company said, adding that it will also reach out to SME associations to help meet their members’ technology needs as they fight the pandemic.

“Covid-19 has created unprecedented challenges and vulnerabilities to the global economy and especially for SMEs, who are often faced with financial constraints and limited access to technological support,” said Selina Yuan, president of international business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“[This programme ] aims to provide much needed, timely relief to SMEs so they can rapidly respond to the current crisis while speeding up their digital transformation and emerging from the current pandemic stronger and more resilient.”