Alibaba Cloud is enhancing its ecosystem strategy to meet the emerging demands of enterprise customers in the Philippines

Alibaba’s new cloud ecosystem strategy in the Philippines to address pandemic-related digital transformation demands. Source: Unsplash

Alibaba Cloud’s new digital ecosystem strategy targeting Philippine SMEs

  • Alibaba Cloud is enhancing its ecosystem strategy to meet the emerging demands of enterprise customers in the Philippines
  • Cloud adoption and intelligence from data analytics to assist local SMEs with their digital transformation amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Alibaba Cloud is piloting its new ecosystem strategy in the Philippines, as more and more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country pivot to adopting digital services in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Government-imposed lockdowns to curb the pandemic have accelerated digital transformation among businesses across a wide swath of industries. Migrating operations and services to the cloud took on a new urgency for enterprises, and Alibaba Cloud started seeing sizable growth in the country.

Philippines is currently the country in Southeast Asia with the second-highest number of active coronavirus cases, and the uncertainty of the health situation has prompted many Filipino firms to invest in cloud strategy as a longer term solution.

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is offering a range of cloud computing services to companies of varying size worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, startups, corporations, and public services.

Alibaba Cloud is introducing the new digital ecosystem strategy in the Philippines following the establishment of the Philippines Ecosystem Alliance two months ago. The alliance is a joint initiative between Alibaba Cloud and its local ecosystem partners to spotlight cloud adoption, and the use of data analytics intelligence to help businesses to streamline their transformation goals plus new innovations to improve their market presence.

“The Philippines is a booming market with a big group of the young and digital-savvy population,” said Leo Liu, the general manager of Hong Kong, Macau, Korea and Philippines for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “There is a strong demand for digital transformation in accordance with the local government’s ‘cloud-first’ initiative. We have established local team and business coverage in the Philippines and will continue to invest in the country.”

Currently, Alibaba Cloud has over 20 local partners in the Philippines (part of its global from across the industry spectrum such as in retail, fintech, media, information communications technology (ICT), business process outsourcing (BPO), healthcare, and education.

It plans to support 5,000 businesses in the Philippines on their digital migration journeys by the end of 2023. Alibaba Cloud also hopes to train 50,000 and certify at least 10,000 IT professionals within the next three years.

Gartner data shows Alibaba Cloud as the biggest cloud services provider in Asia and third biggest globally, and is currently working with close to 10,000 partners to serve 350,000 businesses worldwide, and previously announced a $283 million investment in this fiscal year to further empower global partners and to accelerate joint innovations with them.

“We have been serving large, small, and medium enterprises — and even individual developers — with our technology services, which enable them to accelerate their businesses digital operations,” said Lancelot Guo, the VP of Alibaba Group and the president of Ecosystem and Sales Operations, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, during a media conference held at the sidelines of Apsara Conference 2020.

“We see the cloud as a digital transformation vehicle or infrastructure essential for businesses to survive and overcome the effects of the pandemic,” Guo said.