Cloud giant
Alibaba and telecommunications and Internet corporation SoftBank are to set up a joint venture. Alibaba, which has headquarters in Hangzhou, China, is a cloud and ecommerce company. Alongside cloud-based activities, its services extend to areas like mobile commerce, online auctions and money transfers. The company was established in 1999 and is led by Executive Chairman and founder Jack Ma. The joint venture with SoftBank is intended to establish cloud-computing options in Japan as competition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure.
SoftBank, a SoftBank Group company, has headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The company offers a wide range of services including fixed-line telecommunications, broadband and Internet and ecommerce services. Together the two companies will establish ‘SB Cloud’. SoftBank will have a 60% share in the new company, while Alibaba will own the remaining 40%. SB Cloud will leverage Alibaba’s cloud-computing capability while SoftBank will be in charge of sales and marketing. A new data center will be established in Japan to support the new venture.
“I believe the joint-venture team can develop the most advanced cloud platform for Japanese customers, as well as for multinational customers who want to use the resources we have available in Japan,” explained SoftBank’s Executive Vice President Eric Gan. Mr. Gan has also become SB Cloud’s representative director and CEO.
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