Alibaba and SoftBank Corp. Joint Venture Offers Cloud Service in Japan

Recently, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., and SoftBank Corporation, announced upcoming plans to provide cloud computing in Japan, by forming the new, SB Cloud Corporation in a joint venture. The new organization aims to provide Japanese customers ranging from startups to enterprise grade organizations, cloud-computing services based on technologies and solutions from Alibaba Cloud.

“The local Japanese market is seeing great potential for public cloud and this will be a growing market in coming years. We are proud that Alibaba Cloud can leverage its cloud computing expertise in the joint venture with SoftBank.” Repored Sicheng Yu, vice president of AliCloud.

SB Cloud Corp will build a data center in Japan, and will pose strong competition for Amazon, and Microsoft who currently have a strong footprint in Japan’s cloud market. The expansion of the a cloud division in the joint venture forges ahead confidently, as the number of Alibaba’s customers had nearly doubled; a 175% revenue increase year over year, Alibaba’s Executive Chairman, Jack Ma reported. Alibaba Cloud will offer its technical cloud expertise, to Softbank’s large knowledge of the market and impressive customer network, while contributing sales and operation know-how to the new joint venture.

“I believe the JV team can develop the most advanced cloud platform for Japanese customers, as well as for multinational customers who want to use the resources we have available in Japan,” said SoftBank Executive Vice President Eric Gan, who is also CEO of SB Cloud, in a recent press release.

Several sources including Businesswire.com, report that a long time friendship between SoftBank’s founder, Masayoshi Son, and Alibaba’s, Jack Ma, is reflected in their joint business ventures together in both cloud computing and robotics, and by the large stake that SoftBank owns in Alibaba, a reported 32%.

The new business venture will offer data storage & processing services, enterprise-level middleware, and cloud security services.

For more about leading Cloud Platform Vendors like Alibaba, visit our free 2016 Cloud Platform Vendor Buyers Guide.