Alibaba Cloud, part of Alibaba Group — based in China, is expanding its reach into EMEA. This is significant for businesses in the region, as it presents another worldwide cloud option for the market.

The cloud giant has announced the opening of two data centres in the UK — which will help address the increasing demand for the organisation’s services.

“Our expansion into the United Kingdom, and by extension into Europe, is in direct response to the rapidly increasing demands we have seen for local facilities within the region,” said Yeming Wang, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud EMEA. “We are incredibly proud to take this latest step in our continued investment in EMEA.”

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Alibaba’s footprint in the region is steadily increasing, with data centres across three EMEA locations: Frankfurt, Dubai, and now London.

Cloud expansion

The availability of these two new data centres will allow organisations in the EMEA region, using Alibaba Cloud, to accelerate their digital infrastructure. Business continuity is also a clear focus, with dual availability zones offering stronger disaster recovery capabilities, according to the Chinese-based interent company.

With these latest facilities, Alibaba Cloud now operates 52 availability zones in 19 regions around the world.

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“The global cloud computing market is growing and increasing enterprise experience has led to a maturity of deployments,” said Tony Lock, Distinguished Analyst and Director of Engagement from Freeform Dynamics. “Today, planning global enterprises and organisations of all sizes are able to make informed and strategic decisions about their cloud investments.”

“Together, cloud solution maturity and customer experience are leading to the popularity of a multi-cloud approach to services, which, in turn, is encouraging providers to look carefully at their own points of distinction. The arrival of Alibaba Cloud into Europe is an important milestone, not only for the company, but for the market by providing another significant worldwide cloud option for businesses in the EMEA region.”

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Customer story

Speaking as a customer of Alibaba Cloud, Sean Harley — Chief Information Officer of Ascential — commented, “As a specialist, global information company, we enable smart decision-making for the world’s most ambitious businesses. Working with Alibaba Cloud has been key to our global success, and we have seen positive impacts from the easy implementation, a robust and scalable public cloud platform, and first-class customer support especially in a complex market such as China.”

“In an increasingly complex, digitally-driven world, we need a service provider who is equally ambitious and has the geographical, vertical and technical know-how to support us, not only in China but eventually across the world to help us better serve our global customers,” he said.