Baidu brings its cloud services to Singapore

Baidu’s first customers will be two of its subsidaries

Chinese search giant Baidu has launched its cloud services in Singapore, as the company attempts to catch up with Chinese rivals Alibaba and Tencent by offering cloud services in the city-state.

The company said the services will cater towards Chinese companies expanding to the region and local companies seeking “high-performing, secure and reliable cloud services”.

Baidu’s entire cloud portfolio, including computing, storage, networking, security, database, and system management services, will be available in Singapore, which according to Forrester will become the largest enterprise technology market in Southeast Asia this year.

Baidu says Singapore’s strategic location in Asia and status as a leading international financial centre is driving huge demand for cloud computing.

Beijing-based Baidu currently trails Alibaba, Tencent and AWS in China’s cloud market, where it had an estimated 8.8 percent slice of the market in Q1, according to Canalys. Nevertheless, the company is pitching its artificial intelligence expertise as an differentiator as it seeks to catch up to its rivals.

Global cloud market leader AWS has its APAC headquarters located in Singapore and Alibaba set up its international cloud headquarters in the city-state in 2015.

In a press release, Baidu announced its first customers would be its subsidiaries iQiyi, a video streaming business, and Do Global, a mobile advertising platform.

The news comes as the company posted revenues of 26.33 billion yuan (£3.08 billion) for Q2, beating analysts’ estimates of 25.77 billion yuan (£3.02 billion).

Baidu also reported profits of 2.41 billion yuan (£280 million), bouncing back after posting losses of 327 million yuan ($38.3 million) in the first quarter for the first time since going public in 2005. The shakey results prompted Robin Li Yanhong, the company’s chairman and chief executive, to urge staff to “push for new boundaries”.