Alibaba Cloud Expands European Presence with UK Data Centres

Two additional availability zones added to meet rapidly increasing customer demand across EMEA

London, United Kingdom, 22 October 2018 – Alibaba Cloud, the cloud-computing arm of Alibaba Group, has today announced the opening of two availability zones in the UK, in addition to its Frankfurt and Dubai data centres launched in 2016.

This expansion not only extends Alibaba Cloud's capabilities within Europe, but also serves to highlight the provider's ongoing commitment to the region. Alibaba Cloud's local footprint is steadily increasing, with data centres across three EMEA locations: Frankfurt, Dubai, and now London.

Answering an increase in demand for Alibaba Cloud services across the EMEA region, the pair of

high performance availability zones will enable organisations in the region to accelerate the upgrade of their digital infrastructure enabling more efficient digital transformation initiatives. Business continuity is also a clear focus, with dual availability zones offering stronger disaster recovery capabilities.

The London location also boasts 24/7 on-site support – including both security and engineering – as well real-time monitoring and a ticketing system with SLA guarantees. The new data centres offer a wide range of Alibaba Cloud product lines, including: Elastic Computing, Storage, Database, Network, Application Services and Big Data Analytics.

With its latest facility, Alibaba Cloud now operates 52 availability zones in 19 regions around the world with more global regions set to follow.

"At Alibaba Cloud, we are – and always have been – committed to our customers. 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. "Using 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."

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."

An independent view from Tony Lock, Distinguished Analyst and Director of Engagement from Freeform Dynamics, "The global cloud computing market is growing and increasing enterprise experience has led to a maturity of deployments. Today, with 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 world-wide cloud option for businesses in the EMEA region."

More info about Alibaba Cloud's global infrastructure, please visit: https://www.alibabacloud.com/global-locations

Alibaba Cloud will also be celebrating the UK launch at a summit on November 1, 2018 in central London. Business executives and IT professionals are invited to join more than 30 informative sessions on topics including global-growth strategies, data transformation, AI, Multi-Cloud and IoT. For more information and to register, visit: https://www.alibabacloud.com/event/london-2018

About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com), the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, is among the world's top three IaaS providers according to Gartner, and the largest provider of public cloud services in China, according to IDC. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, start-ups, corporations and government organizations. Alibaba Cloud is the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee.