On June 27, Alibaba Cloud's official website issued a notice: Based on the review of the global infrastructure investment layout, Alibaba Cloud decided to increase investment in Southeast Asia, Mexico and other places, and at the same time shut down data center services in Australia and India.
In December last year, Alibaba Cloud started the data center migration plan in Australia and India, and the current migration work in India is basically completed, and the service will be stopped at 24:00 on July 15.
The data center migration in Australia is still in full swing and is expected to be completed by the end of September, with no service available after 24:00 on September 30.
As soon as the news came out, it caused heated discussions among netizens, and netizens expressed their support for Alibaba Cloud's withdrawal, saying that Alibaba Cloud's departure from high-risk areas was a wise move and supported Ali to safeguard national interests.
Some netizens are worried about whether Ali's server in India can be moved back, and whether it will be detained by Indians, after all, if you don't play hooligans and don't take advantage, you are not Indians.
How good is Alibaba Cloud?
In September 2008, Alibaba determined its cloud computing and data strategy, and decided to develop a hyperscale general-purpose computing operating system "Feitian". In October, the "Feitian" team was formed, led by Wang Jian.
Wang Jian is the chief architect and chief technology officer of Alibaba, and once held a key position at Microsoft Research, and his first task was to ensure the success of the development of the "Feitian" system.
In 2009, Alibaba launched its cloud computing business, and Alibaba Cloud was officially born.
At the 2010 China IT Leaders Summit, Tencent Ma Huateng and Baidu Robin Li also said that they are optimistic about cloud computing, because computing power is limited by computing architecture and Moore's Law, and new technologies mean high risks and even bottomless pits.
Robin Li said: "Cloud computing is old wine in a new bottle, nothing new. ”
Ma Huateng is even more excessive: I think this matter, you can live a few hundred years, a thousand years, and it is indeed possible to "Avatar" at that time.
Jack Ma said that he is full of confidence and hope in cloud computing.
Alibaba's senior management has also been shaken for a while, what is the future of cloud computing business? Can the flying system carry the huge demand? For a period of time, rumors about "Alibaba Cloud going to be removed" came and went.
In the end, Ma Yun said: Invest 1 billion yuan in Alibaba Cloud every year for ten years, and then talk about it if you can't do it.
With Jack Ma's support, Alibaba Cloud was able to survive, but the difficulties at that time were still huge, business difficulties, technical difficulties, team difficulties, countless difficulties were placed in front of Wang Jian's team, and Wang Jian felt extremely tired and painful.
Wang Jian encouraged the team: "persistence is greatness", and awarded the "Feitian Award" to all employees, leaving himself with endless "scolding". Wang Jian once said: "During that time, I was scolded even more than I have been scolded in my life, but I don't regret it. ”
In 2013, Alibaba replaced the traditional minicomputer with new technology, and Alibaba Cloud became the first company in the world to provide 5K cloud computing service capabilities. Alibaba Cloud ushered in a turning point.
The 12306 ticketing system crashes every Spring Festival until the service is supported by Alibaba Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud shares 75% of the traffic during the Spring Festival rush.
After that, the health code is also backed by Alibaba Cloud's technical support.
In 2018, Gartner released the "2018 Global Cloud Computing Market Report", which showed that Alibaba Cloud became the top three in the global market after Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, and ranked first in China and the Asia-Pacific region.
From obscurity to the world's third, Alibaba Cloud has broken everyone's doubts in ten years, and now Alibaba Cloud services are used in various industries, including: e-commerce, finance, urban governance, industry, agriculture, etc.
In the 2023 Asia-Pacific cloud service vendor rankings, Alibaba Cloud continues to top the list, with a share of 22.2%, followed by Amazon in second place and Microsoft in third place.
In the first quarter of 2024, Alibaba Cloud continued to maintain its leading position in China's cloud computing market, with a market share of 37%, followed by Huawei Cloud with a market share of 19%. Tencent Cloud ranked third with a share of 16%.
In addition, Alibaba Cloud revealed that it will build new data centers in five countries, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Mexico, to accelerate its global expansion efforts.
According to IDC data, the global cloud computing market will reach a scale of 200 billion US dollars in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 25%, North America accounts for 43%, Europe accounts for 29%, and the Asia-Pacific region accounts for 17%, and China's cloud computing market size is about 52 billion yuan.
Up to now, Alibaba Cloud is the most powerful cloud computing vendor in China and even in the entire Asia-Pacific region, and Alibaba Cloud's business has expanded to more than 40 countries and regions around the world.
However, due to geopolitics, investment returns and other issues, Alibaba Cloud's business has problems in some countries, such as India and Australia.
In May, Alibaba withdrew from the Indian company PaytmMall, in which Alibaba and Ant Group held a 28% stake.
The incident was seen as a sign of Alibaba's withdrawal from India.
India, like China, has a population of 1.4 billion, which should be a big piece of the pie! Why did Ali withdraw?
First of all, in the Indian market, Alibaba Cloud is encountering Amazon.
Paytm is so uncompetitive, the company loses money every year, and lives on debt and financing, and such a company is really muddy and can't support the wall.
Amazon's layout in the Indian market is much more ingenious than Alibaba's, with a monthly traffic of up to 360 million, and plans to occupy 35% of India's market share in 2025.
This left Alibaba disheartened.
Secondly, what happened to Xiaomi and vivo worries Alibaba.
Xiaomi and vivo were once the leaders of the Indian mobile phone market, but without exception they were "plundered" by India.
First, Xiaomi was fined 4.8 billion yuan on the grounds that Xiaomi was suspected of violating the Foreign Exchange Management Law. Now Xiaomi's 7 mobile phone manufacturing plants in India, 150,000 sales stores, and part of the investment may be snatched up by India.
At the same time, the Indian government also supports Tata's acquisition of a 51% stake in vivo India, with the aim of achieving a controlling stake.
In fact, these Indians have been planning for a long time, first asking the two companies to recruit a large number of Indian workers, and then requiring the management to have Indians, and even the CEO to be Indian, and then starting to plunder assets.
This worries Alibaba, which is also a Chinese company.
Finally, the domestic market Ali is doing poorly.
Do you dare to imagine that Pinduoduo can counterattack Ali and JD.com?
But that's the case, Pinduoduo has surpassed JD.com and Ali in terms of market capitalization.
Previously, most users used Tmall and JD.com for online shopping, but in recent years, Pinduoduo has been favored by consumers for its low price and high cost performance.
At the same time, live e-commerce is developing rapidly, with 618 this year, and the integrated e-commerce Tmall, Jingdong and Pinduoduo totaled 571.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.9%; Live e-commerce Douyin, Kuaishou and Diantao totaled 206.8 billion yuan, an increase of 12%.
The cake is so big, the live broadcast is too much, and the integrated e-commerce will naturally have to take less, in order to ensure that he can get enough of the cake, Ali has to shrink the front.
In addition, the low penetration rate of smartphones in India, the low efficiency of transportation, and the low and slow penetration of e-commerce are also one of the reasons for Alibaba Cloud's withdrawal from the Indian market.
On the whole, Ali's withdrawal from India is not a bad thing, after all, if you put your assets in a high-risk area, even if they develop in the future, I am afraid that they will become someone else's "wedding clothes".
Now that AI is coming, the cloud computing market will also change, and AI may become the main theme of the cloud computing market.
We hope that Alibaba Cloud can develop better and better, provide better services for China and the world, and also hope that Alibaba Cloud can go to a higher level and keep pace with Amazon and Microsoft.
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