AliCloud to Accelerate Regional Cloud Computing Adoption with Expanded Hong Kong Data Center

Singapore, November 17, 2015 －AliCloud, Alibaba Group’s (NYSE: BABA) cloud computing business division today announced that it has completed the expansion of its data center operations in Hong Kong byestablishing a second availability zone which has officially begun operations to address the increasing demand for cloud computing resources in the Asia Pacific region, including growing requirements for enterprise-classavailability and disaster recovery. AliCloud has further underscored its commitment to globalization with an international website in English, <intl.alicloud.com>, providing English product descriptions, support for USD payments and tailored for an international audience.

AliCloud’s second data center in Hong Kong is designed with multiple redundancies and points  of failure for increased reliability, surpassing Tier 3 standards with 99.99% availability and an extremely high level ofsecurity. The data center is well connected to cities in Southeast Asia, leveraging on the border gateway protocol (BGP) to provide high-speed, low-latency services.

In May 2014, AliCloud established its first data center in Hong Kong, formally entering the global cloud computing market. AliCloud has since set up two data centers in Silicon Valley and one in Singapore, and iscontinually refining the structure of its global network. At present, AliCloud has regional nodes in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Singapore, and the United States. New data centers are also planned for Japan, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere.

“A new availability zone in Hong Kong to meet the urgent need for cloud computing resources in the Asia Pacific region is a strategic move for AliCloud. The need for a truly global cloud computing platform is still on theupswing as can be seen from AliCloud’s overseas business volumes, which have increased more than four times compared to last year,” AliCloud Vice President Ethan Sicheng YU said. Mr. Yu added that the newavailability zone can easily be deployed for high availability and disaster recovery while providing users with enhanced cloud and big data services.

LinkByNet, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and LongTu Game are some of the well-known organizations which are already benefiting from AliCloud cloud computing services via Hong Kong nodes. Hong Kong-based LinkByNet Asia-­‐Pacific General Manager Bruno Peraudeau recently commented that it is increasingly imperative for cloud service providers to provide global coverage, and acknowledged AliCloud’s focus onenhancing its global network and providing more premium quality services around the world. “AliCloud is stepping up the pace of international expansion with the deployment of its own data centers around the world. From our perspective, AliCloud enables us to provide businesses with a global platform, so that customers can leverage on our services worldwide,” said Mr. Peraudeau. AliCloud is also reaching out to business owners at the Hong Kong Science Park to provide cloud computing support, facilitating local innovation and entrepreneurship.

At present, Hong Kong AliCloud cloud server nodes support Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Relational Database Service (RDS), Object Storage Service (OSS), Server Load Balancer, Cloud

Monitoring System, Cloud Shield and other services. Proprietary virtual private cloud (VPC) network services are being planned to meet more sophisticated user requirements.

Data from research firm IDC shows that the public cloud market for Asia Pacific, including Australia, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and other Asia Pacific countries, is estimated to be worth US$2.4billion in 2016 and US$3.55 billion by 2018. Growth rates are significantly higher in Asia Pacific than for the global public cloud computing market, reflecting the huge market potential in the region.