Alibaba Cloud reveals plans to strengthen global partnership ecosystem
Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of the 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 program for partners, which as well as new incentives for to reward the partner’s excellence.
“We are committed to growing together with our global partners and providing them with even stronger support to expand their business 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 emphasize how much value we place on our partners. Together with our partners’ industry knowledge, technological capabilities and market insight, 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 optimize the marketplace listing fee on Alibaba Cloud’s marketplace platform, and expand product sales through Alibaba Cloud’s sales team and its vast network of channel partners.
Alibaba Cloud also promises to improve technical support for global ISV partners, offering extensive technical enablement resources to help them build, publish and operate their solutions on the cloud platform. In addition, the company will invest in developing customized products and solutions together with its ISV partners, to meet the various demands for digital transformation from customers across Southeast Asia.
ISV partners including Neo4J (graph database provider), 6Estates (AI fintech platform), One2Cloud Pte Ltd (multicloud solutions and blockchain services provider) and SCash Global Pte Ltd (technology innovation SaaS company) have already joined the accelerator program to gain the most benefit from their collaboration with Alibaba Cloud.
At the same summit, the APAC cloud leader also announced the launch of a new training portal for global partners. The Alibaba Cloud Partner Empowerment Portal provides product and service training and certifications, educational content on current technology developments, and resources and tools to enhance 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 of China, the company also announced a series of new financial incentives, including discounts and rebates to reward resellers and distributors, as well as some joint go-to-market initiatives. This is part of the USD 1 billion investment that Alibaba Cloud announced in 2022 to support its global partners’ technology innovation and their market expansion.
“Our new initiatives demonstrate our unwavering commitment to helping our global partners thrive and innovate on the Alibaba Cloud,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “Partners play an important role in enhancing and delivering Alibaba Cloud’s services and offerings 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 a deeper collaboration with its ecosystem partners. The cloud leader has announced its new partnership with IBM to offer a best-in-class security solution for businesses across APAC.
The security solution integrates the functions of IBM’s security products – QRadar SIEM and QRadar SOAR – as well as Alibaba Cloud’s wide range of security functions. It offers 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 reduce growing cyber security 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 launch platform 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 to engage with customers.
Alibaba Cloud also announced collaborations with training partners to strengthen talent development in Southeast Asia. Aiming to train 100,000 general talent 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 (provider of information technology services and solutions), Solutions for Asia (provider of security services), Lightning Cloud (platform for multicloud operation) and Edu360 Cloud (platform for digital certification service).
The leading cloud service provider recognized a wide range of partners for their collaboration and innovation in contributing to customer success over the past year. 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 around 12,000 partners worldwide, including Salesforce, VMware, Fortinet, IBM and Neo4j.
