Alibaba Cloud is planning to build a data center in Malaysia which will be the country’s first global public cloud platform in the country, and Alibaba’s 15th data center location. The country’s other major cloud competitors in the region - such as AWS and Google Cloud - are based in Singapore.

Ma and Najib, sitting in a tree 

The cloud provider stated that it wishes to “provide enterprises in Malaysia and the region with powerful, scalable and cost-effective cloud capabilities to support their global expansion”, and is reportedly considering Cyberjaya, the country’s technology capital, as the location for the facility.

Simon Hu, Alibaba Cloud president said that the move stands to benefit SMEs who could use big data and IoT to “succeed in the digital age.”

In November last year, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak - who is currently in China on the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping - named Jack Ma, Alibaba Group founder and executive chairman, an adviser to Malaysia’s digital economy.

Then, earlier this year, Najib and Ma created a Digital Free Trade Zone in Kuala Lumpur, and recently the Hangzhou Municipal Government signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) connecting the zone with China’s comprehensive E-Commerce Pilot Zone, allowing for open cross border e-commerce trade between the two countries.