Alibaba Cloud has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore’s card-based wallet system, EZ-Link, to collaborate and boost Singapore’s smart computing and data-driven capabilities.
As a part of the deal, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, will fuel $500K in cloud credits for the utilization of its cloud platform and data centers by students and researchers from NUS for research and academic purposes. Whereas EZ-Link will pilot a big data analytics project, along with Alibaba Cloud and NUS.
Boosting the University’s data curriculum, the association will also facilitate in building local IT skillsets, meet enterprise demands as well as support the research and development of advanced technologies in the Big Data era.
NUS will work together with Alibaba Cloud in the areas of cloud computing, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, cyber security, quantum computing, and interactive digital media, as well as identifying opportunities for joint research projects and information exchange.
Ethan Yu, Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Global said,
Singapore has been a pioneer in fostering innovation and technological disruption in Asia, and we are proud to contribute to the nation’s development through our partnership with NUS and EZ-Link. By leveraging the expertise of academia, the government and enterprises, we intend to raise the bar in nurturing talent, business and communities to reach new frontiers of the digital economy.
Nicholas Lee, CEO of EZ-Link, said they hope this agreement will improve the card’s cashless payment options and make it a driving characteristic of the system.
Alibaba Cloud and NUS are currently working with EZ-Link to study the card usage patterns across the EZ-Link card schemes, service touch points, and customer segments to improve customer experience and create better services via real-time insights.
Focus on the cloud business: Tapping big data and middleware offerings
Alibaba Group ventured into cloud business in 2009 and went out of the domestic market later in 2015, announcing the plans to invest $1 billion. Operating data centers in 14 cities, including Singapore, Australia, Japan, it boasts 2.3 million customers with around 651K paid users.
The group hasn’t given any timeline regarding the investment of $1 billion but Ethan Yu, Alibaba Cloud’s global general manager and vice president of Alibaba Group says they’ll be certainly notifying if they decide to increase the amount. Also, he adds, they are exploring possible locations, if needed, to set up more data centers.
To give a tough competition to its rivals, Alibaba is now seeking to tap big data and middleware offerings to bridge the existing gap of elasticity. It will propel its middleware offering, Aliware, to offer the features that lack in traditional middleware. Yu furhter states,
For internet companies such as Alibaba itself, especially in the e-commerce space, we need more elasticity to handle [sporadic spikes in] traffic. Transactions sometimes come in short [bursts], not long, so very often you want a scaling-out mechanism and you want to do that in a much cheaper way, using commodity boxes. This is missing in the IT world today.
Yu adds having established a number of data centers and presence in various markets in Asia, they have plans to penetrate into the Europe’s market.
Plans and opportunities in Southeast Asia
Alibaba has been actively progressing in the region, it backed e-commerce website Lazada in April 2016, and the Alibaba-owned fintech firm, Ant Financial, invested into Thailand’s Ascend Money in November. While Alibaba Cloud signed an agreement with the digital media support company Conversant Solutions and the ICT training company Prestariang Berhard to work on an education platform.
The group also collaborated with Singaporean government-owned investment arm Infocomm Investments to connect the Chinese and Southeast Asian’s ecosystem.
