Alibaba: Aliyun

Alibaba Cloud Computing (www.aliyun.com) aims to build a cloud computing service platform,
including e-commerce data mining e-commerce data processing, and data customization. It was
established in September 2009 in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of Alibaba Group.
Alibaba created its cloud-computing business unit in 2009 to respond to demand from sellers
using the companys shopping sites. Alibabas IPO filing showed that revenue from the cloud
business stood at $90 million, accounting for only 1.4% of its total revenue, in the last nine
months of 2013. In May of 2014, Alibaba launched a data center in Hong Kong as a first major
step to expand its fledgling cloud-computing business outside mainland China.
Aliyun is targeting Chinese businesses operating in the Greater China region and Southeast Asia.
As Alibaba explained in its announcement, Chinese companies that want to set up business
outside mainland China usually need to add Web servers in local markets to handle additional
traffic. This means that they have to deal with a new set of Internet regulations in each country.
Renting Aliyun servers means that they will be able to sidestep regulations, lowering costs and
barriers to entry.

On May 13, 2013, ChinaNetCloud announced a strategic partnership with Aliyun.

Aliyun the cloud computing subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba has formally
opened its third globally focused data center in Beijing in May 2014.
This is the companys third facility that focuses on global services the other data centers are
located in Hangzhou and Qingdao.
Its Beijing facility will provide 10,000 physical servers for its first phase and will mainly
serve clients in the Beijing and North China region.
Phase two of the build its South China engine room - is expected to open in the second half of
2014.
Aliyun said its major customers include government research institutions, financial organizations
and start-ups.
The Beijing facility will provide four main cloud offerings - cloud server ECS, relational
database service RDS, open storage service OSS and a load balancing service SLB.