Alibaba Cloud launches China Gateway initiative in Singapore with eight partners

Alibaba Cloud has expanded its China Gateway initiative to Singapore, with eight local partners onboard, helping local businesses expand into the Chinese market and more broadly across Asia.

The partners supporting the initiative are the info-communications media development authority (IMDA); Enterprise Singapore; DBS SME Banking; Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCCI); SMU Academy; SGTech; Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE) and TechNode.

“Overseas expansion continues to be a priority for DBS SME customers,” said Tan Su Shan, group head of Institutional Banking at DBS Bank. “However, many lack on-ground market knowledge and understanding of business requirements.

“To navigate these new markets, it is crucial that they work with the right partners and advisors to give their business a head-start.

“DBS is honoured to be the banking partner for Alibaba’s Cloud’s China Gateway initiative, and look forward to helping our customers capture new growth opportunities in the Greater China region. Our customers can leverage our global network, on-ground expertise and partners to fast-track their growth plan.”

Through the local partners in Singapore and around the region, Alibaba Cloud aims to provide firms of all sizes with an “in-depth immersion program” on doing business in China, connecting them to Chinese companies and consumers via the Alibaba ecosystem.

“As the largest public cloud provider in Asia Pacific and our role as the data intelligence backbone of all business units in the Alibaba ecosystem from e-commerce to payments, logistics and supply chain management means we have the proven expertise and experience to help businesses grow,” said Selina Yuan, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International.

“With the support of our partners here, we are confident of supporting local businesses of all sizes and from all backgrounds to grow beyond Singapore, especially into China’s market.”

With its international headquarters in Singapore, Alibaba Cloud has seen steady growth across the Southeast Asian region, partnering with organisations such as e-commerce platform Lazada, Sena Traffic Systems (Sena), Malaysia’s leading smart traffic system controller and Indonesian financial services firm, Adira Finance.

The cloud infrastructure provider has 15 availability zones outside mainland China, covering Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Japan markets.

The provider claims to be the only global cloud provider with local data centres in Indonesia and Malaysia, however, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud have both revealed plans to launch Indonesian data centres with a new AWS Jakarta region expected to be complete by 2022.

Alibaba Cloud was also the first cloud-based Anti-DDos Scrubbing Centre in Malaysia, it claims, which launched in 2018, adding an additional layer of protection for customers.

The Chinese giant was also the first cloud provider to secure the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS)’s Outsourced Services Providers Audit Report (OSPAR) validation.

This accreditation is designed to support the financial services industry in reducing compliance-associated cost while maintaining the security of outsourced data storage and management. Alibaba Cloud also has 70 other security and compliance accreditations worldwide.

In 2018, the vendor also launched the ASEAN Partner Alliance Programme aimed at developing a ‘sustainable ecosystem” to help more service providers, system integrators, ISVs and start-ups accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

During the same year, Alibaba Cloud rolled out the Innovation Incubator Programme in partnership with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to give internship and mentorship opportunities for students in the science and technology industry.

More recently, the business has partnered with Singapore Management University to up-skill more than 1,000 working professionals in Singapore around cloud and technology competencies.