Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), the largest online retailer of the world, held annual developers’ meet for its cloud project arm in its home city, Hangzhou, with over 10,000 developers present during the event. AliCloud, Cloud-arm of the retail giant, is an indication of Alibaba’s wider growth strategies.
AliCloud maintains its data centers and offers cloud services on a rental basis allowing companies to use its computing resources for a particular fee. The price model resembles everyday utility bills and depends upon the overall usage. According to Wang Jian, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba,
“We are like the road, and businesses that use our infrastructure are the cars that drive on the road.”
AliCloud has over 1,000 employees running its operations, although the company refused to disclose its revenue or profit margins. At the same time, Mr. Jian added that the cloud unit is not involved in the analysis or management of the data generated by other units of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) including Tmall and Taobao. Similarly, the firm didn’t collect any data of the businesses using its cloud computing resources.
AliCloud has some additional ventures including its operating system, Yun OS, for different set of devices. Dutch phone maker, Philips, displayed its latest Smartphone offering powered by Yun OS. Earlier, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s open handset alliance partner, Acer, in the Android committee tried to launch a Smartphone powered by Yun OS in 2012 but couldn’t get permission from Google considering the incompatibility of Yun OS with Android.
Earlier, this week Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA) rebranded its online payment service Alipay into Ant Financial Services Group. Ant Financial Services Group has already taken the financial industry with a storm by launching several financial products including its mobile app, ‘Alipay Wallet’, money market fund, ‘Yu’e Bao’, and private financial bank, MyBank.
This article has been written by Prakash Pandey.
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