The cloud computing arm of eCommerce group Alibaba has opened its first UK data centres, with two operational in London.
The expansion comes as the company looks to meet “rapidly increasing” customer demand across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Alibaba Cloud also launched data centres in Frankfurt and Dubai in 2016.
With its latest facility, the business now operates 52 ‘availability zones’ in 19 regions around the world.
According to Yeming Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud EMEA, the company’s expansion into the UK is in “direct response to the rapidly increasing demands we have seen for local facilities within the region”.
“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,” he added.
“We are incredibly proud to take this latest step in our continued investment in EMEA.”
The London sites will have 24/7 on-site security and engineering support, as well as real-time monitoring.
The new data centres offer a range of Alibaba Cloud product lines, including elastic computing, storage, database, network, application services and big data analytics.
Sean Harley, chief information officer of London Stock Exchange-listed B2B media business Ascential, is a customer of Alibaba Cloud.
He says working with the business has been “key” to Ascential’s global success.
“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,” he added.