Alibaba to build two data centers overseas

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, plans to build two data centers in India and Indonesia by the end of next March, as the internet giant speeds up its transition from a pure e-commerce player to a comprehensive technology firm with growing overseas outreach.

With the planned facilities in Mumbai and Jakarta, Alibaba Cloud will increase its total number of data center locations to 17, covering countries such as Australia, Germany, Japan and the United States, said Simon Hu, president of the business unit.

"Such deployment will enhance our computing resources in Asia and allows greater support for small and medium-sized enterprises in cloud capabilities," he told the Alibaba Computing Conference in Shanghai over the weekend.