Chinese tech giant Alibaba have expanded their cloud computing arm with two new data centres in London, their first in the UK. The centres will offer 24/7 on-site support and claim to provide more seamless global coverage than competitors Amazon Web Services and Azure.
The move comes in time for November 11 or Singles鈥� Day, the largest shopping event in the world. Last year the Alibaba Group handled a record-breaking , with the day鈥檚 revenue totalling over $25 billion.
Alibaba Cloud鈥檚 EMEA general manager, Yeming Wang, said: 鈥淥ur 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.
鈥淯sing AI-powered and data-driven technology, our latest data centres will offer customers complete access to our wide range of cloud services, from machine learning capabilities to predictive data analytics, ensuring that we continue to offer an unparalleled level of service. We are incredibly proud to take this latest step in our continued investment in EMEA.鈥�
Alibaba Cloud now operates including Silicon Valley, Dubai, Frankfurt and Tokyo.
The Chinese group is currently the fifth largest cloud business after Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM. In China it already holds close to half the market share.
