Alibaba Cloud unveils plans to strengthen global partnership ecosystem

Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence at Alibaba, delivered a keynote speech at Alibaba Cloud Partner Summit 2023

New initiatives launched on ISV acceleration, partner training empowerment and new reselling incentives at Alibaba Cloud Partner Summit 2023

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is set to 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 program for partners, as well as new incentives to reward partner excellency.

“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 know-how, technology capabilities and market insights, we can deliver significant benefits to our customers.” 

New Initiatives to Support Partners’ Growth

Alibaba Cloud’s ISV Acceleration Program was launched 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 program, the cloud leader will help its ISV partners to optimize the marketplace listing fee on Alibaba Cloud’s marketplace platform, and expand the product sales through Alibaba Cloud’s sales team and its vast network of channel partners.

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

ISV partners including Neo4J (graph database provider), 6Estates (AI fintech platform), One2Cloud Pte Ltd (multi-cloud solution and blockchain services provider) and SCash Global Pte Ltd (technology innovation SaaS company) have already joined the acceleration program to get the most benefits from their partnership with Alibaba Cloud.

At the same summit, the APAC cloud leader also announced the launch of a new training empowerment portal for global partners. The Alibaba Cloud Partner Empowerment Portal provides product and service trainings 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, Web3 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 USD1 billion investment that Alibaba Cloud announced in 2022 in order 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.” 

New Partnership on Security, Blockchain and Talent Development

During the summit, Alibaba Cloud also unveiled deeper collaboration with its ecosystem partners. The cloud leader has announced its new collaboration with IBM to provide a best-in-class security solution for businesses across 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 centralized visibility into the cloud environment to detect threats such as ransomware, insider threats and cloud attacks. The co-developed solution aims to mitigate mounting cybersecurity risks while creating a secure, stable and protected cloud environment for clients during their digital transformation journey.

Another collaboration unveiled is with Avalanche, a leading 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 customize, launch and maintain their own metaverse space, creating new dimensions for engaging with customers.

Alibaba Cloud also announced collaboration 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. The initial training partners include Rahi Systems (information technology services and solutions provider), Solutions for Asia (security service solution provider), Lightning Cloud (multi-cloud operation solution platform) and Edu360 Cloud (digital certification service platform).

The leading cloud service provider recognized a wide range of partners for their collaboration and innovation in contributing to customers’ success over the past year. The Asia Partner of the Year honors eight partners including IBM, AI Rudder (from Singapore), LGMS Berhad (from Malaysia), PT Sigma Cipta Caraka (from Indonesia), and Digital One (from Hong Kong).

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