Alibaba announces first cloud data centre in the Philippines

At the Alibaba Cloud Summit 2021, the tech giant announced that it will open its first cloud data centre in the Philippines by the end of this year.

This facility is part of Project AsiaForward, Alibaba’s $1 billion strategy to expand its presence in South East Asia.

The new data centre, located in Manila, is intended to provide local businesses, citizens and government with a variety of Alibaba Cloud services. These will include data storage, Elastic Compute Service, database, Content Delivery Network, and Global Network solutions.

When announcing the new facility, the company said that it was investing in the Philippines as part of “Alibaba Cloud’s growing commitment in the country, focusing on the banking, FinTech, retail, logistics, and education sectors, among others.”

The addition of a new data centre in the Philippines will bring Alibaba Cloud’s total number of availability zones to 76 globally. At the same time that it announced the plans for the new facility, Alibaba said that its Indonesian data centre was open for business. The new Indonesian data centre Alibaba Cloud’s third in the country.

Investing in the Philippines infrastructure now appears to be an excellent strategy. According to a study by the World Bank in conjunction with the country’s National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the Philippines lags behind neighbouring countries in digital adoption. Across all sectors – citizens, business and government – the country is behind nearby countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Brunei.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital adoption, but it also highlighted the critical need for the country to accelerate the process. NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon noted when presenting the study results, “As we are now living with the new normal, the use of digital technology and digital transformation has become important for Filipinos in coping with the present crisis, moving towards economic recovery, and getting us back on track towards our long-term aspirations.”

Opening a new data centre in the Philippines will give Alibaba Cloud a head start in providing infrastructure to support tech adoption initiatives in the country, in addition to solidifying its foothold in South East Asia.