ALIBABA Cloud on Tuesday said its first data center in the Philippines now services more than 200 local and international companies.
The company, which serves as the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, also plans to invest more in local infrastructure as demand grows, said Allen Guo, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence country manager for the Philippines.
“For the Philippines — including local small and medium enterprises, conglomerates, and international companies — for now, there are more than 200,” Mr. Guo said during a briefing in Makati City.
“We can see in the Philippines that cloud adoption continues to grow and that there is still a big potential demand from Filipino enterprises. In order to support the Philippines, Alibaba Cloud is definitely committed to continuing to invest in infrastructure, services, and talent in the country,” he added
The company has said that it intends to support 50,000 local information technology professionals and help 5,000 Philippine businesses in their digital transformation journey by 2023.
The company’s data center in Manila brings its total availability zones to 76 spread across 25 regions globally.
In June last year, the company announced that it would invest $1 billion in Asia-Pacific over the next three years. It targets to support one million digital talents, 100,000 developers, and 100,000 technology startups in the region.
Mr. Guo said the company’s data center in the Philippines underscores its commitment to equipping Philippine customers with “secure, reliable and scalable cloud solutions.”
This year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival was powered by Alibaba Cloud’s infrastructure system. It “significantly improved efficiency of computing, storage, and network in data centers supporting the event, while also reducing network latency,” it said in a statement.
According to the company, it saw an 8% year-on-year decrease in computing costs per resource unit from April 1 to Nov. 11.
Alibaba Cloud is therefore looking to introduce more technologies that have successfully supported this year’s 11.11 to Philippine enterprises, according to Mr. Guo.
“Alibaba Cloud’s native-cloud database products … significantly expanded the capacity of consumers’ shopping carts by more than double, from 120 items to 300,” the company said. — Arjay L. Balinbin
