Alibaba Cloud bullish about ASEAN opportunity with Fusionex

Fusionex and Alibaba Cloud have been selling their joint solutions to the market for a few months already, successfully moving existing Fusionex customers to the Alibaba Cloud, from other cloud infrastructures, and even from on-premise set-ups.

But what exactly is being sold?

According to Fusionex CEO, Ivan Teh, “Alibaba Cloud has its own technology stack that powers infrastructure and a lot of connectivity, and a lot of technology on Alibaba Cloud is also used across their own businesses, for example Alibaba and Taobao, which are their e-commerce platforms.”

When Fusionex technology combines with Alibaba Cloud, what results is faster processing of huge amounts of data, with customers having option to scale at the speed of light.

Teh said, “We want to accelerate this, and are committed to this exciting partnership ahead.”

Mr Raymond Ma, Regional head of Alibaba Cloud and Dato’ Seri Ivan Teh, CEO of Fusionex

So, besides these two companies combining to offer a total solution to customers, Fusionex would become a key go-to-market partner for Alibaba Cloud in ASEAN.

A co-location data centre in Cyberjaya, would house Alibaba Cloud’s public cloud ambitions, and there is talk of private clouds for different regulated industries like healthcare and finance, being introduced next year.

Future plans

When Ivan Teh and Alibaba Cloud head for ANZ and ASEAN, Raymond Ma, announced their strategic partnership, they also alluded to how Malaysia is only the starting point, and how eventually the whole APAC region, was their whole oyster.

Teh shared, “Malaysia will be the hub to reach out to the rest of the region, but by combining with Alibaba’s international presence, we can reach out to ASEAN and APAC as well.”

Ma had said, “Today is the official announcement of our partnership, but we look forward to many years together, and a long-term aligning of our visions together for a long and mutually rewarding partnership.

Ma had observed that the Malaysian market is very active with digital transformation activities, a situation which is ripe for Alibaba Cloud and Fusionex to tap into, with their join solutions, as well as Alibaba’s own artificial intelligence (AI) solution, ET Brain.

ET Brain is Alibaba’s version of IBM’s Watson, a proprietary AI program that tackles real-world challenges, and which is powered by the China giant’s own large-scale computing engine, Apsara.

Malaysia’s potential

According to Ma, the fundamentals are very good in Malaysia, and with Fusionex having been in the market for a long time, and with Malaysia’s good IT infrastructure, there is a good base overall for adopting new technologies like ET Brain.

“We believe (ET Brain) will come to Malaysia. China is experiencing a digital transformation period too, and Alibaba as a leading cloud company with AI and big data analytics, is working with lots of enterprises in China, to do digital transformation.

“There are similar requirements from different clients in this market. We have every confidence to work with Fusionex to bring (our expertise) here to serve the local market and local enterprises.”

Teh also saw similar opportunities in the region, despite the different regulatory environments for each country in Southeast Asia. “It is time to embark on this journey, leapfrog and leverage resources to get ahead.”

He basically observed that the market is also looking for ways to improve efficiencies and increase sales. “So, we are excited to do this for them.”

Senior VP of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud, Simon Hu had earlier shared during a recorded video playback that Alibaba Cloud is expanding rapidly in China, and wants to seize global market opportunities with Fusionex.

He also alluded to a mid-November meeting with Ivan Teh, to discuss about further future investments.