Alibaba opens its first self-built data center

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched on Monday its very first self-designed, self-built data centers in Hebei province, beefing up its cloud computing capability to better serve online shoppers and entrepreneurs in northern China.

The two newly launched data centers in Zhangbei county in Zhangjiakou are expected to become Alibaba's key computing infrastructure in northern China, providing services to the giant's core businesses in cloud computing, big data and e-commerce.

Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer of Alibaba Group, said that the e-commerce giant had previously teamed up with telecom operators in building data centers.