Alibaba Cloud introduces new partner initiatives

Source: Alibaba Cloud. Cai speaks during Alibaba Cloud's Partner Summit 2023 in Singapore.

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, will further empower its ecosystem partners through a series of new initiatives, including the launch of an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Acceleration Program, a training empowerment programme for partners, as well as new incentives to reward partner excellence.

“We are committed to growing together with our global partners and providing them with even stronger support to expand their businesses into Southeast Asia and beyond,” said Edward Cai, Chief Commercial Officer, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence at the company's Partner Summit 2023 in Singapore.

“All new initiatives underscore how much value we place on our partners. Together with our partners’ industry knowhow, technology capabilities and market insights, we can deliver significant benefits to our customers.”

Alibaba Cloud’s ISV Acceleration Program is designed to provide global ISVs with new financial incentives and more robust technical support to expand their business opportunities in Southeast Asia. As part of the programme, Alibaba Cloud will help its ISV partners to optimise the marketplace listing fee on Alibaba Cloud’s marketplace platform, and expand the product sales through Alibaba Cloud’s sales team and its network of channel partners.

Alibaba Cloud has also pledged to enhance technical support for global ISV partners to help them build, publish and operate their solutions on the cloud platform. In addition, the company will invest to co-develop customised products and solutions with its ISV partners in order to meet the diverse digital transformation demands from customers across Southeast Asia.

ISV partners Neo4J (graph database provider), 6Estates (an artificial intelligence [AI] fintech platform), One2Cloud (multicloud solution and Blockchain services provider) and SCash Global (technology innovation software-as-a-service [SaaS] company) have already joined the acceleration programme.

Alibaba Cloud also announced the launch of a new training empowerment portal for global partners at the same event. The Alibaba Cloud Partner Empowerment Portal provides product and service training and certifications, educational content on topical technology developments, as well as resources and tools to increase partners’ service capabilities. The portal aims to empower 500 global partners including channel partners, managed service partners (MSPs) and ISVs in the current financial year, with training topics covering cloud, AI, Web 3 and more.

To bring more tangible benefits to Alibaba Cloud’s partners outside China, the company also announced a series of new financial incentives including discounts and rebates for rewarding resellers and distributors as well as some joint go-to-market initiatives. This is part of the US$1 B investment that Alibaba Cloud announced in 2022 to support its global partners’ technology innovation and their market expansion.

“Our new initiatives showcase our unwavering commitment to helping our global partners thrive and innovate on Alibaba Cloud,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“Partners play an essential role in enhancing and delivering Alibaba Cloud’s services and offering to our global customers. Together with partners, we can bring world-class technologies, products and solutions to our customers for their greater business success.”

During the summit, Alibaba Cloud further demonstrated deeper collaboration with its ecosystem partners. The cloud leader has announced a new collaboration with IBM to provide a best-in-class security solution for businesses across the Asia Pacific region (APAC). The security solution integrates features of IBM’s security products - QRadar SIEM and QRadar SOAR - as well as Alibaba Cloud’s wide range of security capabilities. It provides services including real-time reporting and centralised visibility into the cloud environment to detect threats such as ransomware, insider threats and cloud attacks. The codeveloped solution aims to mitigate mounting cybersecurity risks while creating a secure, stable and protected cloud environment for clients.

Another collaboration unveiled is with Avalanche, a Blockchain platform, providing a launchpad for businesses to rapidly deploy metaverses on the Avalanche public blockchain. Cloudverse is a one-stop solution for businesses to seamlessly customise, launch and maintain their own metaverse space, creating new dimensions for engaging with customers.

Another new collaboration is with training partners to bolster talent development in Southeast Asia. With the target to train 100,000 general public talents in the region by the current financial year, the SEA Talent Empowerment Program aims to attract training partners to contribute to the talent development drive. Initial training partners include Rahi Systems (information technology services and solutions provider), Solutions for Asia (security service solution provider), Lightning Cloud (multicloud operation solution platform) and Edu360 Cloud (digital certification service platform).

The cloud service provider took the opportunity to recognise a number of partners for their collaboration and innovation in contributing to customers’ success over the past year. The Asia Partner of the Year award was given to eight partners including IBM, AI Rudder (Singapore), LGMS (Malaysia), PT Sigma Cipta Caraka (Indonesia), and Digital One (Hong Kong).

Alibaba Cloud currently works with about 12,000 partners worldwide, including Salesforce, VMware, Fortinet, IBM and Neo4j.