E-commerce giant Alibaba this week launched its very first self-designed, self-built data centers in Hebei Province, beefing up its cloud computing capability to better serve online shoppers and entrepreneurs in northern China.
The two newly launched data centers in Zhangbei County in Zhangjiakou are expected to become fundamental to Alibaba’s computing infrastructure in northern China, providing services to the giant’s core businesses in cloud computing, big data and e-commerce.
Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer of Alibaba Group, said that the e-commerce giant had previously teamed up with telecom operators in building data centers.
The two centers in Zhangbei are the first centers we have exclusively designed and built to support our business.
According to Zhang, the new centers will soon provide services during Alibaba’s upcoming Nov 11 shopping festival, the biggest annual online shopping event in China. The centers are also expected to provide clouding computing and big data services to 2 million small and medium-sized companies.
The launch of the new data center is in line with Alibaba’s “going North” strategy. The move is aimed to help Alibaba gain an increased market share in the northern regions of China.