Alibaba Cloud is a cloud provider that offers several types of services with the possibility of remote access. With an increase in remote workforces worldwide, cloud computers can support hybrid working solutions for clients by allowing them to access their work remotely from any device while minimizing the risks. To do that, the company is focusing on building the next-generation data centers to enhance its cloud services across the globe.
Why the global infrastructure?
Alibaba Cloud was named by IDC as the world’s fastest-growing provider in the global public cloud market. Global market research organizations like Gartner and IDC have recognized Alibaba Cloud as the No.1 Public Cloud Provider in China and APAC. Alibaba Cloud’s data centers will further expand Alibaba Cloud’s global ecosystem and footprint. The additional locations will provide customers with the potential for more responsive network communications. Meanwhile, Alibaba Cloud’s products, including data storage and analytics services, enterprise-level middleware, and cloud security services are designed to be available in more markets. Alibaba Cloud supports Code compliance by ensuring independent third-party certificates and audits.
Sustainability in Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud is on track to meet carbon reduction targets as it upgrades server-storing data centers around the world and aims to have its global data centers running entirely on clean energy by 2030. Alibaba Cloud Alibaba Cloud datacenters use green technologies over five of its data centers which are the world’s only liquid cooling cluster deployed on such a large scale. Alibaba Cloud’s Zhangbei data center for example earned a Green Power Consumption Certificate from the Beijing Electric Power Exchange Center in 2021. Water-cooling technology at East China Data Center ensures free cooling for 90% of its operating time, driving down energy consumption by more than 80% compared to mechanical cooling. Alibaba Cloud Hangzhou data center saves 70 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year.
On a large-scale waste incineration power generation unit in Southwest China, Alibaba Cloud uses AI algorithms to help customers increase the incineration efficiency of solid waste by 2.6%. This helped reduce carbon emissions by about 48% compared to before. In Panzhihua Iron and Steel, with intelligent technologies, 1.2 kilograms of iron can be saved for every ton of steel produced. In Hangzhou the congestion rate is reduced by 15% through smart transportation, effectively reducing the carbon emissions caused by traffic jams.
To show its convictions, Alibaba Cloud launched the Energy Expert platform to encourage people to adopt low-carbon behaviors and be environmentally accountable. The partnership between Alibaba and NTU focuses to develop multiple AI applications by leveraging NTU and Alibaba’s expertise in natural language processing, machine learning, and cloud computing across areas such as retail, urban transport, and healthcare
Regions and Availability Zone on Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud is distributed across 70 countries and serves more than 3 million+ customers worldwide and collaborates with 10,000+ global partners. Alibaba Cloud has 83 availability zones across 27 regions globally. There are regions in mainland China and outside China. When selecting the services that you need, you should choose the closest to the geographical location of your users for faster access.
Bandwidths provided in regions outside mainland China are applicable to users in those regions but, if the users of your services are located in mainland China, you should not select regions outside mainland China because they may experience high latency when using those regions.
Availability zones (AZ) are physical areas within a region that have their own independent power grids and networks. The latency of connections between instances within the same zone is lower.
Benefits
Alibaba Cloud is a leading global cloud provider of innovative, secure cloud services that help organizations accelerate their digitization:
- Global Compliance: Alibaba Cloud adheres to international information security standards and is committed to using international best practices to protect customers’ personal information and comply with applicable laws of the countries where it operates.
- Security Capabilities: Alibaba Cloud’s security capabilities are the backbone of our offerings. By leveraging years of experience and professional expertise in defense against Internet security threats, Alibaba Cloud provides security protection for the cloud platform and implements various compliance requirements into the internal control program and product design of the cloud platform. In addition, Alibaba Cloud has participated and contributed to the development of multiple standards and best practices for the cloud industry.
- Europe Cloud Code of Compliance: Alibaba Cloud adheres to the EU Cloud Code of Conduct by ensuring its customers the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) related measures or the Alibaba Cloud’s monitoring scheme that applies strong safeguards to meet all requirements set out in the EU Cloud Code
- Performance and Scalability: The users can provision the amount of resources that they actually need, knowing they can instantly scale up or down along with the needs of their business
- Availability: Each region is fully isolated and comprised of multiple AZs and zones within the same region can access each other over the internal network.
- Flexibility: the Global Infrastructure gives you the flexibility of choosing how and where you want to run your workloads.
Conclusion
By leveraging years of experience and professional expertise in defense against Internet security threats, Alibaba Cloud provides security protection for the cloud platform and implements various compliance requirements into the internal control program and product design of the cloud platform.
