Alibaba to Launch Four New Global Cloud Centers by Year-End

(Beijing) — E-commerce giant Alibaba Inc. said on Monday it will open four new cloud data centers outside its home China market by the end of the year in an aggressive move to compete globally with the likes of Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp.

Alibaba is China's leading e-commerce company, controlling more than half of the country's massive local market. But as growth at home starts to slow, the company has been under mounting pressure to find new opportunities overseas by competing with the big global giants.