Alibaba Cloud shaping the future of Asia Pacific’s digital era … Malaysia| Digital Asia

A booth introducing Alibaba Cloud's services is seen at an exhibition venue in Shenzhen, China. Alibaba Cloud, which viewed Asia Pacific as a huge market, aims to be a gateway and localised business partner with companies, governments, research institutions and other industry players in the region. — Reuters photo

KUALA LUMPUR: Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of China's e-commerce powerhouse, Alibaba Group, is shaping the future of Malaysia and the Asia Pacific in transforming industries and cities towards a new digital era.

Alibaba Cloud, ranked third in the global public-cloud market, recently launched nine products in Singapore as part of its global footprint to provide a new retail concept that helps merchants deploy resources more effectively and gain deeper insights on consumer.

These products will meet the retail industry's needs in digitalising operations which marks the seamless integration of online and offline, and provide better protection against fraud.

Alibaba Cloud International Business President Wang Yeming said Alibaba Cloud was keen to share its expertise with business partners and clients.

He emphasised that Alibaba Cloud, which viewed Asia Pacific as a huge market, aimed to be a gateway and localised business partner with companies, governments, research institutions and other industry players in the region.

“Within the next three years, we want to develop our partner eco-system in this region to about 10,000 partners from several thousand today.

“We also want to develop a regional programme to nurture talent,” Wang said at the one-day Alibaba Cloud Summit held in Singapore on Aug 15.

The company announced its collaboration with National University of Singapore to focus on nurturing Singapore's data-science talents.

It also planned to roll-out digital education programmes in Sabah, Penang and Johor Bahru by year-end in a collaboration with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Sdn Bhd (MDEC).

Alibaba Cloud Malaysia General Manager Kenny Tan said education in cloud computing should be encouraged to promote better awareness and equip entrepreneurs with the capability to leverage on the cloud platform to improve performance.

Tan told Bernama that Malaysia had the infrastructure available to accelerate its digital transformation but there's always room for improvements to boost adoption levels.

“Alibaba Cloud invested significantly in and remains committed to Malaysia,” he said.

Last month, the company launched its Second Availability Zone for cloud services and the first cloud-based Anti-DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) Scrubbing Center in Malaysia to provide customers with new levels of protection against DDoS attacks.

“We have forged partnerships in the Malaysian enterprise and financial sectors, and will leverage our technology to boost growth and create more value. We will continue to invest in Malaysia,” Tan said, adding that Alibaba Cloud was eyeing to roll-out its City Brain smart-city traffic management programme in Malaysia soon.

“Currently, the pilot programme is being conducted with Kuala Lumpur City Hall and the results are positive,” Tan added.

The City Brain pilot programme was conducted in collaboration with MDEC and e-hailing provider, Grab Malaysia.

In September 2016, City Brain was implemented in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou in China, where it increased traffic speed by 15 per cent. — Bernama