Aliyun enlists partners to take over the world's white fluffy stuff

Intel and Equinix first of many to jump into bed with Alibaba

Chinese cloud purveyor Aliyun, part of the Middle Kingdom's Alibaba Group, has signed up a raft of international partners to flog its services globally.

The seven companies include chipzilla Intel, data centre outfit Equinix, French website hosting and cloud services provider Linkbynet. This is the first wave of partners to join Aliyun in its plans for cloud world domination.

"We are expecting more partners to join, which also covers Europe," added a spokeswoman.

Rather than build its own data centres, Aliyun's strategy is to cosy up with local providers. It first intends to shift its cloudy services to Chinese companies seeking to expand abroad, and then focus on flogging services to foreign companies, Aliyun's chief architect Derek Wang told El Reg last month.

Aliyun already has a vast cloud services business, with 1.4 million direct and indirect customers.

The announcement is a rapid stepping-up of Alibaba's plans to go global, named as its number one priority for 2015 last month.

Ethan Sicheng Yu, an Aliyun veep, said in a canned statement: “The new Aliyun program is designed to bring our customers the best cloud computing solutions by partnering with some of the most respected technology brands in the world. We will continue to bring more partners online to grow our cloud computing ecosystem.”

Raejeanne Skillern, general manager of Intel's cloud services biz said the deal will help Intel to continue its collaboration in the rapidly growing market of international public cloud consumers."

Chris Sharp, veep at Equinix, said the move will enable its multi-national customers "to expand their cloud-base applications across Asia, in a secure, direct manner."

Aliyun has data centers in Beijing, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Silicon Valley, and a data centre in Dubai currently under construction. ®