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Alibaba Cloud will invest $1 billion over the next three years to support its partners’ “technology innovation and market expansion”.
The investment from the cloud computing division of the Chinese tech giant will consist of a mix of both financial and non-financial incentives, including “financing, rebates and go-to-market initiatives”.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud also plans to launch a “regional accelerator” program to provide its partners operating in various markets with a localized business collaboration model.
So what’s the bigger picture?
Alibaba already has a pretty big share of the cloud storage market, according to Gartner statistics (opens in new tab)it lagged behind only Microsoft and Amazon with its 9.5% market share in 2021.
The division already has approximately 11,000 partners worldwide, including Salesforce, VMware, Fortinet, IBM and Neo4j.
Alibaba Cloud was already actively looking to expand its international presence.
Under its “Global Delivery and Service Program”, it unveiled three Customer Service Centers in 2022, located in Malaysia, Portugal and Mexico, to support international customers as they move to the cloud.
But unfortunately for investors, Alibaba’s expansion beyond its core market is subject to regulatory oversight.
In 2022, it was reported that the US government was assessing Alibaba Cloud to determine whether or not it poses a risk to national security.
According to reports by Reuters (opens in new tab)conducted the Biden administration’s investigation to find out how the company handled US customer data and whether the Chinese government could gain access to US intellectual property.
But it’s not just the cloud computing market that the Hangzhou, China-based company is looking to take over.
Alibaba has set up a subsidiary called Lingyang Intelligent Service Company, which it says will provide “digital intelligence services for enterprises.”
The new business unit could potentially compete with companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP in business intelligence.