Alibaba Cloud Celebrates 10th Anniversary in Hong Kong with Pledges to Strengthen Ecosystem and AI Capabilities

HK$10 billion investment made in innovation and talent development
underscores commitment to the city

Hong Kong, April 24, 2024 – Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today kicked off a series of events to mark its 10th anniversary serving businesses in Hong Kong. To support Hong Kong’s development as a regional tech and innovation hub, Alibaba Cloud plans to launch an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) empowerment program in 2024, with an aim to attract 100 technology partners and help foster an ecosystem to sustain Hong Kong’s digital transformation.

Over the past decade, Alibaba Cloud has invested more than HK$10 billion in its development in Hong Kong, setting up multiple data centers, expanding its service offerings and developing local tech talent. Alibaba Cloud has recorded double digit annual revenue growth over the past three years in Hong Kong, supporting the digital transformation of over 40,000 businesses.

Alibaba Cloud Celebrates 10th Anniversary in Hong Kong, committed to sustaining innovation with Hong Kong.

Leo Liu, Vice President of International Business, General Manager of North APAC Region, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, commented on the company’s remarkable journey: “In the past decade, bolstered by the growing demand for cloud computing across sectors, Alibaba Cloud has achieved encouraging growth. This would not have been possible without the support of our customers, partners and our team. We remain committed to the future development of Hong Kong. We will continue to leverage the power of generative AI to support a broader range of businesses in achieving faster and more cost-effective expansion in Hong Kong and beyond.”

Enhancing Hong Kong's role as a “super-connector” with technology

Benefiting from Hong Kong's role as a “super-connector”, Alibaba Cloud has been able to assist customers from mainland China with their global expansion during the past decade. As Hong Kong speeds up its integration into the national development, more and more businesses are looking to expand in the Greater Bay Area, in Asia and beyond. In 2021, Alibaba Cloud expanded its Hong Kong and Macao Eco Alliance to become the Greater Bay Area Eco Alliance to help Hong Kong businesses transform, innovate and grow regionally. Alibaba Cloud ecosystem currently actively collaborates with over 300 partners in Hong Kong, with expertise ranging from consulting, service delivery, technology development, to resellers.

In response to the latest trend of AI deployment and development, Hong Kong customers can leverage Alibaba Cloud’s AI offering to boost their own AI adoption and unleash productivity. For example, Platform for AI (PAI)-Elastic Algorithm Service (EAS), designed to offer a cost-efficient solution for model deployment and inference to individuals and enterprises, allows users to tap into computing resources as needed, eliminating the need to oversee the management and upkeep of physical or virtual servers. PAI-Lingjun Intelligent Computing Service, a comprehensive AI computing platform for high-performance computing tasks, such as foundation model training and inference, was recently made available for customers outside Chinese mainland. A series of open-source version of its proprietary foundation model Qwen, is accessible for Hong Kong customers to power their applications. In addition, Hong Kong businesses can also leverage Alibaba Cloud’s solutions to build up generative AI scenarios ranging from smart chatbot, enterprise information search and generation, to digital analytics and decision making.

Supporting customers’ digital transformation and regional growth

Lane Crawford, a luxury fashion, beauty and lifestyle department store, is among the customers leveraging Alibaba Cloud's comprehensive solutions to optimize operations and extend its reach into mainland China.

Since 2018, Lane Crawford’s digital business has been running entirely on Alibaba Cloud. The company’s digital stores, including its e-commerce website and WeChat e-shop, have been migrated from physical data centers to Alibaba Cloud. The move has helped Lane Crawford to save on operational and maintenance costs for its IT infrastructure. Embracing cloud-native technology has also profoundly enhanced both the agility and resilience of Lane Crawford's systems, particularly during promotional campaigns when the digital stores experience drastic increases in traffic. Lane Crawford also embraced Alibaba Cloud's security solution and expert compliance consultation services to ensure that their underlying systems and operations adhere to the highest standards of local compliance and regulatory requirements.

Jack Ng, Director of Technology, Lane Crawford, said: “We have seen a shift in Chinese consumers’ shopping habits, with a notable rise in online shopping, particularly through social media platforms. This transition has enabled us to provide our customers with a more seamless and reliable online shopping experience. Furthermore, our partnership with Alibaba Cloud has assisted us in compliance with IT infrastructure regulations in mainland China, and helped increase our digital reach.”

Located at the Hong Kong Science Park, Holistic Technology is a retail solution development company offering a range of innovative and effective online business management systems to SMEs. The company leverages Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure to support its business expansion.

Holistic Technology was “born on the cloud” having used cloud technology to develop its flagship product SoldEazy, a multichannel product listing system, as well as an order management system, a data analysis system, and a logistics management system for merchants from Hong Kong and the rest of the Greater Bay Area to build, operate and manage their cross-border e-commerce business activities. Holistic Technology eventually migrated to Alibaba Cloud in view of the company’s need for more stable and accessible cloud services. In doing so Holistic Technology became one of Alibaba Cloud’s first customers in Hong Kong. As the business expanded into markets such as the UK and Japan, as well as into Southeast Asia, and North America, Holistic Technology leveraged Alibaba Cloud's global infrastructure to ensure seamless cross-regional operations. Furthermore, Holistic Technology also adopted Alibaba Cloud's Object Storage Service (OSS) and Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimize image processing, a commonly-used e-commerce scenario, to enhance customer experience.

Jack Zhang, Chief Engineer of Holistic Technology, said: “As a ‘cloud-native’ company, Holistic Technology has benefited from the security, stability and cost-effectiveness brought by the public cloud. During the nearly 10 years of collaboration, Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure and stable services provide a foundation for our cross-region business development. We look forward to continuing to work with Alibaba Cloud to achieve breakthroughs and innovation in the future.”

Left to right: Thomas Poon, Head of Solutions Architect of Hong Kong, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence; Jack Zhang, Chief Engineer of Holistic Technology; Jack Ng, Director of Technology, Lane Crawford; Leo Liu, Vice President of International Business, General Manager of North APAC Region, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence

Developing local talent and contributing to community

As it continues to expand, Alibaba Cloud remains dedicated to strengthening Hong Kong’s tech and innovation ecosystem through its contribution to talent development. Since 2017, Alibaba Cloud has provided training to over 88,000 individuals through a blend of online and offline training programs, and has issued more than 162,000 certifications.

To date, Alibaba Cloud has partnered with eight universities in Hong Kong to roll out cloud computing training initiatives, including HKU Business School, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and City University of Hong Kong. Additionally, it has collaborated with HKU SPACE and the SEED Foundation to introduce a cloud computing curriculum specifically designed for secondary school students in Hong Kong. This program has benefited over 20 schools and significantly enhanced the digital skills of the younger generation. Building on this momentum, Alibaba Cloud is collaborating with local training institutions like Kornerstone to bring together people of all ages, professions and walks of life together to discover the power of cloud computing and the latest technological advancements.

Alibaba Cloud is also assisting NGOs in Hong Kong to embrace digital transformation. Heep Hong Society, an organization offering professional support to SEN (Special Educational Needs) students, and Young Women's Christian Association of Hong Kong, were supported by Alibaba Cloud to upgrade its online fundraising platform to enhance efficiency. The Hong Kong Council of Social Service is working with Alibaba Cloud to build a dedicated platform to assist local NGOs in addressing challenges faced in the digital era.

About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, management and application services, big data analytics, a machine learning platform and IoT services. Alibaba maintained its position as the third leading public cloud IaaS service provider globally since 2018, according to IDC. Alibaba is the world’s third leading and Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner.