Alibaba Cloud has formally announced it plans to open a new data center in Jakarta, Indonesia as part of its effort to increase support services to SMEs. Alibaba Cloud, which is the computing arm of Chinese e-commerce colossus Alibaba Group, disclosed its intentions to open the new data center before the end of the first quarter in 2018.
In a statement issued to the press the organization declared that the new data center would provide greater computing resources and services to a number of small and medium enterprises in the Asia region. It said: “Alibaba Cloud will significantly increase its computing resources in Asia, allowing greater support for small and medium enterprises.”
The disclosure from Alibaba Cloud that it plans to open a new data center in Indonesia is just the latest move in its aggressive expansion strategy in Asia. It has already opened a new data center in India, and a few months ago revealed it would open a similar facility in Malaysia.
Alibaba Cloud has enjoyed phenomenal success and whilst it operates on a global scale, its expansion in Asia is down to growing demand for reliable scalable data storage in Asia countries such as Indonesia. Other Asian countries like China, Japan, and Singapore already have similar data center facilities.
Analysts have claimed that the entire industry is currently experiencing a boom. NTT Indonesia, which is a subsidiary of NTT Data Corporation, has claimed it’s enjoying ‘significant growth’ which it attributes to developments in e-commerce and increased internet usage. However, a government regulation introduced in 2012 has recently been tightened – especially in the fintech sector. Financial Services Authority at the end of last year introduced its own sub-regulation that says Indonesian’s financial data must not be stored outside the country without prior approval. This could encourage companies and startups to consider working with Indonesia-based servers.