Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce, retail, internet, AI and technology conglomerates in China, and Hewlett Packard, one of the largest information technology companies in America, are teaming up. The two companies announced a joint venture to become the first technology vendor to produce hybrid cloud solutions in the Asia Pacific region. The announcement was made on Wednesday, August 22, and will see Hewlett Packard create the new hybrid cloud solution on the Apsara Stack platform.
The Apsara Stack is a cloud solution created by Alibaba Cloud that is used by medium and large enterprise customers around the world. With the new agreement, the Apsara Stack will become a joint effort between not only Alibaba and Hewlett Packard, but also Intel. Currently, the platform enables the large firms to quickly deploy their cloud solutions, with anywhere from 20 to 10,000 servers, but the collaboration between the three will optimize Aspara Stack.
In a statement regarding the announcement, Scott Morris, Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific Channel, Distribution and Alliances, said, “In supporting Alibaba Cloud, we’re aiming to help customers leverage Apsara Stack powered by HPE technology and services to deploy a comprehensive suite of scalable cloud computing services that securely and cost-effectively manage their business needs.”
The collaboration was primarily announced to meet the ever-changing needs of the customer and how the industry functions as a whole. Companies across every industry are turning to hybrid cloud strategies to utilize both the public and private cloud to optimize their operational efficiencies. Scott Morris said, “Customers are increasingly looking to deploy and design the right mix of cloud environments to take on different workloads of data while maintaining control of on- and off-premises solutions.” It is believed, however, that many will opt for primarily on-premise data solution and storage to decrease security risks, maintain compliance and establish data sovereignty.
On the other side of the collaboration, Alibaba had only positive things to say as well. “We aim to empower enterprises to build a powerful shared service platform in their on-premise data center that complies with security, regulation, and data sovereignty requirements,’ said Alibaba General Manager of Dedicated Cloud and Enterprise Application Jim Ma. “Our collaboration with HPE demonstrates how Alibaba Cloud’s partner network continues to be an important strategic asset to driving digital transformation for customers.”
While both companies are confident the agreement will be mutually beneficial, only time will tell if the joint venture enables them to successfully maximize this next-generation solution.
