Alibaba Cloud to Accelerate Regional Cloud Computing Adoption with Expanded Hong Kong Data Center

Hong Kong, November 17, 2015 – Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group's (NYSE: BABA) cloud computing business division, today announced that it has completed the expansion of its data center operations in Hong Kong by establishing a second availability zone which has officially begun operations to address the increasing demand for cloud computing resources in the Asia Pacific region, including growing requirements for enterprise-class availability and disaster recovery. Alibaba Cloud has further underscored its commitment to globalization with an international website in English, www.alibabacloud.com, providing English product descriptions, support overseas credit cards, and content tailored for an international audience.

Alibaba Cloud's second data center in Hong Kong is designed with multiple redundancies and points of failure for increased reliability, surpassing Tier 3 standards with 99.99% availability and an extremely high level of security. The data center is well connected to cities in Southeast Asia, leveraging on the border gateway protocol (BGP) to provide high-speed, low-latency services.

In May 2014, Alibaba Cloud established its first data center in Hong Kong, formally entering the global cloud computing market. Alibaba Cloud has since set up two data centers in Silicon Valley and one in Singapore, and is continually refining the structure of its global network. At present, Alibaba Cloud has regional nodes in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Singapore, and the United States. New data centers are also planned for Japan, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.

"A new availability zone in Hong Kong to meet the urgent need for cloud computing resources in the Asia-Pacific region is a strategic move for Alibaba Cloud. The need for a truly global cloud computing platform is still on the upswing as can be seen from Alibaba Cloud's overseas business volumes, which have increased more than four times compared to last year," Alibaba Cloud Vice President Ethan Sicheng Yu said. Mr. Yu added that the new availability zone can easily be deployed for high availability and disaster recovery while providing users with enhanced cloud and big data services.

LinkByNet, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and LongTu Game are some of the well-known organizations which are already benefiting from Alibaba Cloud cloud computing services via Hong Kong nodes. Hong Kong-based LinkByNet Asia-Pacific General Manager Bruno Peraudeau recently commented that it is increasingly imperative for cloud service providers to provide global coverage, and acknowledged Alibaba Cloud's focus on enhancing its global network and providing more premium quality services around the world. "Alibaba Cloud is stepping up the pace of international expansion with the deployment of its own data centers around the world. From our perspective, Alibaba Cloud enables us to provide businesses with a global platform, so that customers can leverage on our services worldwide," said Mr. Peraudeau. Alibaba Cloud is also reaching out to business owners at the Hong Kong Science Park to provide cloud computing support, facilitating local innovation and entrepreneurship.

At present, Hong Kong Alibaba Cloud cloud server nodes support Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Relational Database Service (RDS), Object Storage Service (OSS), Server Load Balancer, Cloud Monitoring System, Cloud Shield and other services. Proprietary virtual private cloud (VPC) network services are being planned to meet more sophisticated user requirements.

Data from research firm IDC shows that the public cloud market for Asia Pacific, including Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and other Asia-Pacific countries, is estimated to be worth US$2.4 billion in 2016 and US$3.55 billion by 2018. Growth rates are significantly higher in Asia Pacific than for the global public cloud computing market, reflecting the huge market potential in the region.

About Alibaba Cloud

Established in September 2009, Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group's cloud computing division, develops highly scalable platforms for cloud computing and data management. It provides a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support the participants of Alibaba Group's online and mobile commerce ecosystem, including sellers, and other third-party customers and businesses. Alibaba Cloud is a business within Alibaba Group.