Update | Alibaba hooks up with Accenture, SAP in expansion push in China and Southeast Asia; takes aim in dominating global cloud business

Alibaba Cloud, China’s largest computing services provider, is looking to accelerate its expansion in China and Southeast Asia on the back of newly formed alliances with global consulting firm Accenture and software giant SAP China.
“Accenture is a well-respected consulting firm in the industry, especially for computing enterprises,” said Ethan Yu, vice president of Alibaba Cloud told reporters. “Together with Alibaba’s strengths in big data, we can combine machine learning and artificial intelligence [into cloud computing] and work together to better serve clients.”
Yu Yi, managing director of Accenture in Greater China, called the collaboration a “milestone” for both companies.
Alibaba Cloud set up its headquarters for its international business in Singapore last year, and also opened its first data centre outside of China in the country as it competes with Amazon and Microsoft for a slice of the Southeast Asian market.
Research firm Gartner forecasts that Southeast Asia’s IT spending, which includes cloud services, will hit US$62 billion by 2018, with much of it driven by Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
