Aliyun, the cloud subsidiary of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba (whose services include online auction hosting, money transfers, and mobile commerce), is to open a second data center in the United States. The company, which was established in 1999 and is under the leadership of Executive Chairman and founder Jack Ma, has made considerable inroads into the cloud arena. The news comes after its first US data center in Silicon Valley opened only 4 months ago.
The cloud represents a $16 billion market globally and there are a number of projections that suggest at some stage the bulk of all applications will be run in the cloud (both public and private). Aliyun is the largest cloud service provider in China. Its bold move of opening a second US center in only a few months underscores its aggressive expansion plans. The company is looking to open more data centers in Europe, Japan and Singapore in the future. It currently has data centers in Hangzhou, Qingdao, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
"Aliyun hopes to meet the needs of Chinese enterprises in the United States, and the ultimate objective of Aliyun is to bring cost-efficient and cutting-edge cloud computing services to benefit more clients outside China to boost their business development,” suggested Ethan Sicheng Yu, Aliyun's vice president, after the opening of its first US data center in Silicon Valley.
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