Alibaba says it is on track to overtake Amazon as world’s top cloud computing services firm
The head of the Chinese e-commerce giant’s cloud unit says its huge domestic market and international expansion, coupled with a technological edge, will put it ahead of its US rival
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s cloud computing business is on track to achieve its goal of surpassing US firm Amazon’s Amazon Web Service (AWS) unit to become the world’s top provider of cloud services, according to the head of Alibaba Cloud.
Simon Hu, senior vice-president of Alibaba Group and president of Alibaba Cloud, said China’s vast home market plus expansion into countries signing up to the Chinese government’s “Belt and Road Initiative” trade development plan, gives the company its confidence.
“We have taken on Amazon on all fronts as our benchmark over past three years. Some of our products have already exceeded theirs,” Hu told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the Alibaba Computing Conference in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, where the company is based.
“While market expansion needs to be step by step, the technical capabilities of Alibaba Cloud are as good as Amazon’s AWS,” said Hu. He had vowed in 2015 to “match or surpass Amazon in four years” in terms of customers, technology and worldwide scale.
Alibaba made its foray into the cloud services business in 2009, opening cloud storage, computing and data analysis technologies to third-party customers, three years after Amazon founded its cloud division. Alibaba Cloud currently has about one million paying users.