Alibaba Cloud Announces New Availability Zones and Global Investment to Fuel AI Innovation

Gen-AI platform made available for international customers and enhanced partnerships announced for enriched eco-system to further support global customers

PARIS, FRANCE - Media OutReach Newswire - 23 May 2024 - Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, announced its plan to launch its first cloud region in Mexico, and to establish additional data centers in its key markets including Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea in the next three years. The new investment to build new cloud and AI infrastructure across key international markets also aims to enhance the cloud and AI product suite for its worldwide customers, while enhancing global partnership and fostering AI talent development to nurture future digital expertise.

"With the rapidly rising demand for AI across industries, we are reinforcing our commitment to expanding our AI infrastructure and enhancing our cloud capacities worldwide," said Selina Yuan, President of International Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, during the Alibaba Cloud Global Summit in Paris. "Meanwhile, our digital talent initiatives, in collaboration with global universities and local partners in our key markets, will further equip the upcoming generation with the requisite AI skills."

Model Studio for International AI Development
To better enable enterprises and developers to develop AI models and applications, Alibaba Cloud's premier generative AI development platform, Model Studio, will soon be available for international customers via its Availability Zones in Singapore.

Through Model Studio, customers can gain access to Alibaba Cloud's large language model Qwen family – including both closed-source and open-source models, featuring multimodal capabilities with sizes that range from 0.5 billion to several hundred billion parameters - to facilitate the development of custom generative AI applications. Additional model finetuning and inferencing tools and services will be available in the second half of the year, fostering the development of more sophisticated AI tasks with greater cost-efficiency.

Enhanced Partnerships to Elevate Customer Experience
Alibaba Cloud announced it has deepened its collaboration with SAP^[1] to launch a one-stop enterprise solution for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Asia to reap the benefits of digital transformation with rapid deployment and on-demand expansion capabilities.

By combining the holistic business management capabilities of SAP Business One with Alibaba Cloud's scalable, secure and cost-efficient cloud infrastructure, this integrated cloud-based business management solution, is poised to provide SMEs in Asia with a powerful, scalable enterprise resource planning (ERP) system on the cloud without the need for substantial initial investment in IT infrastructure.

Leveraging Alibaba Cloud's compute nest technology, the new solution offers more seamless integration of SAP Business One services with Alibaba Cloud, making it easier for SAP Business One partners to quickly deploy the solution for their customers on cloud. This synergy empowers SMEs to navigate market fluctuations with agility, optimize operational efficiency, and seize growth opportunities.

Given the increasing interest and demand from multinational companies operating in China, Alibaba Cloud is developing a Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud training course in China. The exclusive course is designed for multinational companies with a focus on using and mastering the Salesforce CRM platform, along with its integrated and localized features and products operating on and supported by Alibaba Cloud in China. Since its exclusive availability on Alibaba Cloud in China from the end of 2023, Salesforce has helped multinational brands meet the unique needs of the Chinese market while providing consistency for its global Salesforce products including Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Salesforce Platform.

The training program offers customized offline sessions to teach essential skills and competences required for an administrator role on the platform of Salesforce on Alibaba Cloud. Tailored for beginners, the course is structured to ensure that participants become proficient in navigating and utilizing the system along with its localized features on Alibaba Cloud's trusted cloud infrastructure. It enhances participants' ability to migrate and integrate smoothly into the Salesforce ecosystem, thus driving more effective synergy and coordination within a global work environment. With the gradual rollout of the program widely, the program aims to equip over 10,000 participants with necessary skills to master the Salesforce platform in China by the end of 2025.

Digital Training with Global Education Institutes
Alibaba Cloud announced a new partnership with Demos Group, a leading corporate training provider in Europe. The two parties will launch a suite of Alibaba Cloud online courses, focusing on cloud computing, data analytics and AI, aimed at enhancing the digital competencies of Demos' corporate clients' workforce. Alibaba Cloud is also partnering with OxValue.AI, a deep-tech venture from the University of Oxford, to broaden the suite of Alibaba Cloud capabilities provided to end customers, including AI-driven valuation services.

Moreover, Alibaba Cloud is initiating collaborations with several international universities—University of Reading, Singapore University of Social Sciences, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi, Arovy University, University Saint Thomas Mozambique to introduce cloud computing and AI courses with the aim to cultivate a new generation of AI experts.

Thriving Collaboration to Support Global Customers
Alibaba Cloud has been chosen by a growing base of international customers for its trusted cloud computing capabilities and proven AI technologies, which play a pivotal role in their accelerated digital transformation journey and the pursuit of AI innovation:

• LVMH Group, the world leader in high-quality products, and Alibaba Group announced an extended partnership to push further the boundary of luxury experience in China, leveraging Alibaba's cloud technologies, through AI-powered innovations in retail and on-line with Tmall. In its pursuit of relentless innovation, LVMH has begun integrating Alibaba Cloud's generative AI capabilities, including Qwen, Alibaba's proprietary large language model, and Model Studio. This integration has paved the way for the creation of novel applications and services that underscore the luxury Maison's commitment to staying at the forefront of innovation, harnessing cutting-edge technology to elevate its luxury offerings for global consumers, and fostering innovation-led growth within its global retail businesses.

• FathomX, a digital health AI company emerging from the National University of Singapore, has utilized Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure to support its AI-driven breast cancer detection system. The partnership has led to a 27.6% annual reduction in infrastructure costs. This efficiency boost enables FathomX to expand operations and deliver sophisticated healthcare solutions worldwide.

• International Canoe Federation (ICF): Alibaba Cloud has been helping the ICF to find ways to measure and improve the sustainability of its events around the world since they signed a strategic collaboration last year. Extending the strategic partnership, the ICF will explore the potential of employing Alibaba Cloud's AI-driven ESG solutions to reduce environmental impact and carbon footprint at its events and jointly organise sustainable activities to promote collaborative efforts.

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About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Alibaba has been named the leading IaaS provider in Asia Pacific by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner. It has also maintained its position as one of the world's leading public cloud IaaS service providers since 2018, according to IDC.