Alibaba Cloud: Rising Star in the Cloud Market

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Alibaba Cloud is one of the fastest-growing cloud computing companies in the world. Yet it’s a cloud provider that you might know very little about.

In its most recent quarterly financial statement, China’s Alibaba reported that its cloud computing revenue increased 103 percent year-over-year to reach 4.4 billion yuan ($699 million). According to Synergy Research Group, Alibaba Cloud is the world’s fifth largest provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and hosted private cloud services with 4 percent of the market. Other analysts have said that the company is the third largest IaaS vendor on the planet. And by all accounts, it is the undisputed cloud computing leader in China.

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Of course, Alibaba Cloud has a long way to go to catch Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. Those two firms accounted for 33 percent and 13 percent of the public cloud market, respectively, according to Synergy. However, Alibaba’s growth curve is impressive, and analysts have noted that the company has many similarities to AWS. In fact, many news reports even refer to the company as the “Amazon of China,” for some good reasons.

Like Amazon, Alibaba is primarily an ecommerce company. Its cloud computing business grew out of the IT infrastructure it built to support its online retailing business. And Alibaba’s business strategy is also very similar to Amazon’s.

“In many ways Alibaba is mirroring Amazon – but just trailing it by a few years,” John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, said in an email. “Its revenue is growing in leaps and bounds. It has to have a large and rapidly growing data center infrastructure to support its core businesses. It is leveraging that infrastructure to launch and aggressively grow public cloud services. It is choosing to use large portions of its cash flow to fund aggressive growth in capex.”

He added, “In the cloud market, Alibaba remains a long, long way behind Amazon, but there is no doubt that Alibaba is a serious cloud provider that will continue to grow its presence in the market.”

That growth alone is plenty of reason for IT professionals to get to know Alibaba Cloud.

Alibaba Cloud: Background

Alibaba Cloud (also known as Aliyun and Ali Cloud) is a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, a multinational corporation headquartered in Hangzhou, China. Founded in 1999, Alibaba Group began as a Web marketplace called Alibaba Online. The public face of the company is Jack Ma, co-founder and executive chairman, who is, according to Forbes, the 20th wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of $39 billion. In its most recent quarter, Alibaba reported sales of 61.9 billion yuan ($9.9 billion) with profits of 16.8 billion yuan ($2.7 billion).

By comparison, Amazon had revenue of $51.04 billion and income of $5.44 billion in its most recent quarter.

In 2001, Alibaba entered into a partnership with Yahoo, and it also launched Taobao.com, a consumer portal, which today is one of the most popular websites in the world.

In 2009, the company launched Alibaba Cloud. That was after Amazon launched AWS, but before Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud went live with their cloud computing services.

Alibaba expanded into the U.S. in 2015, when it opened data centers in Silicon Valley (US West) and Virginia (US East). Today it offers a wide range of cloud computing services to customers all over the world.

Alibaba Cloud Advantages and Disadvantages

Alibaba offers its customers a number of benefits that they might not get from other cloud computing providers. They include the following:

Access to China: As the largest public cloud vendor in China, Alibaba offers advantages for companies wanting to do business in the country. It has seven data centers in mainland China (Qingdao, Beijing, Zhangjiakou, Hohhot, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzen), plus a data center in Hong Kong. Its Content Delivery Network (CDN) has more than 1,000 nodes in China, making it easy for organizations to distribute content within the country. It also has special tools to help international companies set up shop in China.
Global Coverage: While Alibaba is strongest in China, it serves international customers as well. It has six Asia Pacific data centers (Singapore, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Jarkata, Mubai and Tokyo), two in the US (Virginia and California), one in Frankfurt and one in Dubai. It also boasts more than 200 CDN nodes outside China, providing coverage for more than 70 countries. It has more than 2.3 million customers worldwide.
Advanced Performance: The Alibaba Cloud website claims the company has set benchmark records in data sorting, mitigating DDoS attacks and processing ecommerce transactions.
Strong Security and Compliance: The vendor says that it complies with international regulations, including PCI DSS and HIPAA in the United States, Germany’s C5 and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). It has received the CSA Star Certification, ISO 20000 IT Service Management Certification, ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management System Certification and ISO27001 Information Security Management System Certification.
Discount Plans:For new customers, Alibaba offers a starter package plan with discounted rates on some of its most popular services. New users also get $300 in credits, including $50 towards Elastic Computing and $250 for other products. Customers can also earn credits by referring new users ($20 for each referral that spends $20 or more).
Wide range of services: Alibaba Cloud’s list of services is extensive, rivalling large cloud companies like AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. The company has made significant investments in artificial intelligence (AI) research and development, and it offers advanced big data and analytics services.

So why wouldn’t you want to do business with Alibaba?

Some enterprises have security and privacy concerns related to doing business with a Chinese company. In addition, Alibaba’s international services are not as robust as those it offers within its own country. Also, some of its website tools, such as the pricing calculator and online documentation are not as advanced as some other cloud providers’.

Alibaba Cloud Reviews

What do users and reviewers have to say about Alibaba Cloud?

One CEO reviewer on the Gartner Peer Insights website said, “You want to be in China! [Alibaba is the] only real option.” He or she gave the service five stars overall, but cautioned that the payment processes were not as good as Amazon’s.

Another reviewer, someone who works in IT operations, said, “If you have primarily locations in China and Asia Pacific region, Alibaba Cloud has very strong presence here.” However, he or she complained that the company’s services and documentation were “too basic,” and that the services available in China were not all available internationally.

A 2017 Gartner report said that Alibaba Cloud “has very little in the way of unique differentiation compared to other hyperscale providers. Additionally, Alibaba Cloud’s vision seems inextricably tied to that of its global competitors; it takes liberal inspiration from competitors when developing service capabilities and branding.”

Dinsdale noted that Alibaba is growing its international business. “Alibaba has the luxury of being the dominant cloud player in the high-growth Chinese market, and it can use that position as a foundation to help it expand globally,” he said.

Alibaba Cloud Services

The chart below details many of the services available through Alibaba Cloud. It’s worth noting that the company has jumped on some recent trends like containers, big data analytics, microservices, machine learning and AI. It also offers extensive high-performance computing capabilities and bare-metal servers, which is a fairly unique offering. (IBM Cloud also offers bare metal, but AWS, Google and Microsoft do not.) Its security offerings are more extensive than some other vendors, but its hybrid cloud capabilities are not as advanced as its competitors’.

One note on the chart: the Alibaba website contains only partial information about which services are available in its US data centers. The chart lists N/A for services that where data center information was unavailable.

Category	Services	Description	Available in US?
Elastic Computing	Elastic Compute Service	Basic compute services	Yes
	Simple Application Server	One-click deployment for various standalone application use cases	Yes
	Elastic GPU Service	Advanced compute services with parallel processing capabilities through GPUs	Va. only
	Auto Scaling	Automatically adjusts resources as needed	No
	Server Load Balancer	Manages sudden traffic spikes	Yes
	Container Service	Runs Docker and Kubernetes on Elastic Compute Service	Yes
	Container Registry	Manages container images	N/A
	Resource Orchestration Service	Simplifies cloud resource management	Yes
	E-HPC	High performance computing services	Va. only
	ECS Bare Metal Instance	Physically isolated servers delivered within minutes	N/A
	Super Computing Cluster	Combines bare metal instances with high-speed RDMA for extremely fast performance	N/A
	Function Compute	Serverless computing	N/A
Storage & CDN	Object Storage Service	Encrypted object storage	Yes
	Table Store	NoSQL cloud database	Yes
	Alibaba Cloud CDN	Content delivery network	Yes
	Network Attached Storage	On-demand NAS for use with Elastic Compute, HPC and Container Service	Va. only
	Hybrid Cloud Storage Array (Coming Soon)	Enterprise storage array that integrates with Alibaba Cloud Storage	No
	Data Transport	Offline data migration	N/A
Networking	Virtual Private Cloud	Hosted, secure private cloud services	Yes
	Express Connect	Dedicated networking to connect cloud environments	Yes
	NAT Gateway	Enterprise-class public network gateway	Yes
	Elastic IP	Manages IP resources	Yes
	VPN Gateway	Connects virtual private clouds and on-premise data centers	Yes
	Cloud Enterprise Network	Networking tools for building a hybrid cloud	N/A
Database	ApsaraDB for RDS	Database hosting that supports MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL	Yes
	ApsaraDB for Redis	Key value database service	Yes
	HybridDB for PostgreSQL	Massively parallel processing data warehouse	Calif. only
	ApsaraDB for MongoDB	Cloud database based on MongoDB	Yes
	Data Transmission Service (DTS)	Migrates data among cloud storage and databases	Yes
	ApsaraDB for Memcache	Managed memory-based caching service for high-speed queries	N/A
	Distributed Relational Database Service	Middleware for managing large distributed databases	N/A
	High-Performance Time Series Database	Time-based database for monitoring IoT data	N/A
Security	Anti-DDoS Basic	Free basic protection against DDoS and Trojan attacks	Yes
	Anti-DDoS Pro	Paid service to protect large enterprises against DDoS and similar attacks	N/A
	Web Application Firewall	Cloud-based firewall	Yes
	Server Guard	24/7 monitoring for high availability	Yes
	SSL Certificates Service	Apply, purchase and manage SSL certificates	No
	Alibaba Cloud Vulnerability Discovery Service (Coming Soon)	Vulnerability assessment	No
	Managed Security Service	Fully managed security that incorporates WAF and Anti-DDoS services	N/A
	Content Moderation	Detects inappropriate content in images and videos	N/A
Monitoring & Management	CloudMonitor	Real-time monitoring of Web resources and applications	Yes
	Resource Access Management	Identity and access control for cloud services	Yes
	Key Management Service	Creates, deletes and manages encryption keys	Yes
	ActionTrail	Security analytics, resource change tracking and compliance auditing	N/A
Domains & Website	Web Hosting	Website hosting that starts at $0.99 per month	Calif. only
	Domains	Domain registry service	N/A
	Alibaba Cloud DNS	Domain name resolution and management	Yes
Analytics & Big Data	E-MapReduce	Hadoop and Spark service	Yes
	MaxCompute	Large-scale data warehouse	Calif. only
	DataWorks	Offline development environment for creating big data applications	Calif. only
	Quick BI	Business intelligence	N/A
	DataV	Data visualization	No
	Image Search	AI-based image search	No
	Intelligent Service Robot	Chatbot platform	N/A
	Dataphin (Coming Soon)	PaaS for intelligent big data applications	No
	Machine Learning Platform for AI	End-to-end machine learning platform	N/A
	Data Integration	All-in-one data synchronization	N/A
Application Service	Message Service	Message queuing and notifications for applications	Calif. only
	API Gateway	API hosting	No
	Log Service	All-in-one service for log data	Yes
	DirectMail	Send transactional notifications and bulk email	No
Media Services	ApsaraVideo Live	Live broadcasting platform	No
Media Services	ApsaraVideo for Media Processing	Transcoding for multimedia content	N/A
Middleware	Enterprise Distributed Application Service	Microservices PaaS	N/A
	Message Queue	Distributed message queue service	N/A
	Application Configuration Management	Centralizes management of application configurations	N/A
Hybrid Cloud	Apsara Stack (Coming Soon)	Deploy Alibaba Cloud services in your data center	No