Alibaba to close data centres in Australia, India amid expansion in Southeast Asia, Mexico

Alibaba Cloud is set to build new facilities in Mexico, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea over the next three years

Reading Time:2 minutes

Alibaba Cloud’s latest initiative reflects the company’s efforts to attract more customers in major markets amid headwinds from geopolitical tensions. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 8:38pm, 28 Jun 2024Updated: 8:38pm, 28 Jun 2024

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing unit plans to shut down its data centres in Australia and India, as the company prioritises infrastructure spending in other markets.

Citing the move as part of its “infrastructure strategy update”, Alibaba Cloud said the decision was made after a “careful assessment” amid new efforts to “expand investment in Southeast Asia and Mexico”, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Alibaba Cloud plans to suspend its data-centre services in India after July 15, while its facilities in Australia will cease operations after September 30. The company said it has notified customers in those two countries to move their business to its data centres in Singapore and other countries.

The affected data-centre zones – which refer to areas with either one or multiple facilities – are in Sydney, which was set up in 2016, and in Mumbai, established in 2018.

Racks of servers at a data centre run by Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding. Photo: Handout

Cloud computing technology enables enterprises to distribute over the internet a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are stored and managed inside data centres.