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Tata Employs Alibaba Cloud Express Connect

By Paula Bernier
Executive Editor, TMC

Two of the world’s communications giants have come together via a new deal. That involves Tata Communications (News - Alert) penning a contract with Alibaba Cloud to use the company’s Express Connect platform.

As a result, customers in more than 150 countries, including India, will be able to connect to that resource via Tata’s IZO Private Connect service. And that will enable enterprises to scale their cloud connectivity and rapidly provision their Alibaba Cloud capacity.

Alibaba Cloud’s Express Connect provides reliable connectivity between virtual private clouds, the internet, and end user networks. Tata Communications’ IZO Private Connect is a cloud enablement service that links an organization’s business VPN to the leading cloud service providers via Ethernet or MPLS.

Tata Communications is the world’s No. 1 international voice carrier, on-net signaling provider, and Ethernet backbone owner and operator. It is a leading MPLS network operator, with more than 90 on-net points of presence around the globe, and the world’s fifth largest IP provider. The company has $2.9 billion in annual revenue, 77 percent of which is generated outside India.

Alibaba Cloud is the cloud computing services arm of China’s Alibaba Group, which had revenues of nearly $23 billion in its most recent fiscal year. It offers elastic, high-performance computing power in the cloud. That includes big data processing, content delivery networks, data storage, relational databases, and protection against distributed denial of service attacks.

The business unit is based in Singapore. Alibaba Cloud, which has more than 2.3 million customers worldwide, has teams in Dubai, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, Paris, San Mateo, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo. And ComputerWeekly.com yesterday reported that Alibaba is opening two data centers in India and Indonesia in an effort to gain a greater share of the Asia Pacific cloud market.

“Among global cloud top players, we are the only company originating from the East,” an Alibaba Cloud spokesperson commented. “By working extensively with China or Asia-based clients, we have a better understand of their needs and more insightful knowledge of the China and Asia market.”