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Alibaba Cloud (also known as Aliyun) is the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group. Launched in 2009, it is the largest cloud provider in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the top cloud platforms globally. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of services — compute, storage, databases, networking, security, AI, and more — to businesses, developers, and governments around the world.
Alibaba Cloud was born out of necessity — Alibaba needed to handle the enormous traffic spikes of events like Singles' Day (11.11), the world's largest online shopping festival, processing hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.
Alibaba Cloud has the widest infrastructure footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, with data centres in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Australia. If your users or business operations are in Asia, Alibaba Cloud often provides the lowest latency and best compliance options.
For businesses that need to operate in mainland China, Alibaba Cloud is the most practical choice. It offers:
Alibaba Cloud frequently offers competitive pricing, especially for workloads in the Asia-Pacific region. Pay-as-you-go and subscription models give flexibility to match different budget requirements.
With 200+ products and services, Alibaba Cloud covers:
| Category | Example Services |
|---|---|
| Compute | Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Function Compute, Container Service |
| Storage | Object Storage Service (OSS), NAS, Block Storage |
| Database | ApsaraDB RDS, PolarDB, AnalyticDB, Tair (Redis) |
| Networking | VPC, SLB, CDN, Express Connect |
| AI / ML | PAI (Platform for AI), NLP, Image Search |
| Security | Web Application Firewall, Anti-DDoS, Security Centre |
| Big Data | MaxCompute, DataWorks, Realtime Compute (Flink) |
| Feature | Alibaba Cloud | AWS | Azure | GCP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Founded | 2009 | 2006 | 2010 | 2008 |
| Strongest region | Asia-Pacific | Global (US-centric) | Enterprise / hybrid | Data & AI |
| China presence | Native (largest) | Limited (via partners) | Limited (via partner) | Not available |
| Global regions | 28+ | 30+ | 60+ | 35+ |
Like other cloud providers, Alibaba Cloud organises its infrastructure into regions (geographic areas) and availability zones (isolated data centres within a region). You choose a region based on:
Alibaba Cloud offers two primary billing modes:
You can interact with Alibaba Cloud through:
To start using Alibaba Cloud:
Alibaba Cloud is a global cloud platform with particular strength in the Asia-Pacific region and unmatched access to the Chinese market. It offers a comprehensive set of services comparable to AWS, Azure, and GCP. In the following lessons, we will explore Alibaba Cloud's global infrastructure, identity management, and core services in detail.