Alibaba opened its very first self-designed, self-built data centers in Hebei Province on Monday. The self-built data centers will gear up its cloud computing capability to better serve online shoppers and entrepreneurs in northern China, reports China.org.cn.
Designed to support Alibaba’s business
Two new data centers in Zhangbei country will offer services to Alibaba’s core businesses in cloud computing, e-commerce and big data. Also the data centers are expected to be Alibaba’s key computing infrastructure in northern China, the report states.
Jeff Zhang, Alibaba’s Group chief technology officer, said that to build the data centers, the e-commerce giant partnered with telecom operators.
“The two centers in Zhangbei are the first centers we have exclusively designed and built to support our business,” Zhang said.
During Alibaba’s upcoming Nov. 11 shopping festival, the centers will provide services, Zhang said. The festival is considered to be the biggest annual online shopping event in China. Also the centers are likely to offer cloud computing and big data services to 2 million small- and medium-sized companies.
“Alibaba has become one of the world’s leading big data companies. We are fully committed to building our platform, at the heart of which are efficient data centers that are highly available and robust, of large enough scale to match our growth and make use of a reproducible IT infrastructure,” said Zhang.
The launch of the new data center is in line with Alibaba’s “going North” strategy to ramp up its market share in the northern regions where its rival JD.com is already giving tough competition. Zhang pointed out that in the near future, Alibaba might build another data center.
Trade collaboration between Canada and Alibaba
Along with penetrating locally, the Chinese firm is also expanding its presence globally. Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba Group, released a declaration of cooperation recently for promoting trade between small- and medium-sized businesses in Canada and Chinese consumers. The agreement binds the Canadian Trade Commissioner service and Alibaba to work together for the expansion of people, services and a two-way flow of goods. Also the two sides will work on how to use e-commerce to expand trade.
Also Alitrip, Alibaba’s online travel booking platform, and Air Canada, Canada’s largest air carrier, signed an MOU to offer a range of travel and vacation packages to Chinese consumers.
