Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Chinese e-Commerce company Alibaba Group, has announced that it will open its first data center, in India by early 2018.

Revenue from Alibaba’s cloud business is growing at twice the rate of its core e-Commerce. Sure, growth has been slowing and there are plenty of formidable global rivals, but the unit is expanding at almost twice the rate of Alibaba’s core e-commerce business, reaching almost $1billion last year from $63 million in 2012. It was the emergence of Amazon’s cloud business that converted all the non-believers on that stock.

The data center is going to come up in Mumbai by March 31, 2018, the group said, adding that another one will come up in Jakarta. Alibaba’s entry in cloud computing in India will add to the fierce completion in the country which already has players like Amazon and Microsoft.

“Establishing data centres in India and Indonesia will further strengthen our position in the region and across the globe,” He added.

Alibaba group Vice President Yu Sicheng had earlier told IANS that India is a potential market for cloud computing.

Together with the recently announced data center in Malaysia, the company will increase its computing resources in Asia, allowing greater support for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) throughout the region with powerful, scalable, cost-effective and secure cloud capabilities.

With the three new data centers planned, Alibaba Cloud will increase its total number of data center locations to 17, covering mainland China, Australia, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

Source: BW Disrupt