Kuala Lumpur, April 8: Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence arm of Alibaba Group, has announced a groundbreaking reduction in pricing for its international customers, slashing rates by up to 59 per cent across its core public cloud products.
This move, effective immediately, signals a significant pivot towards an AI-first strategy, aiming to democratize access to essential computing resources across the globe and spur long-term growth in the rapidly evolving AI sector.
At the heart of this strategy lies a comprehensive price cut across five critical public cloud product categories: compute, storage, network, database, and big data solutions.
On average, customers will see a 23 per cent reduction in costs, reflecting Alibaba Cloud’s commitment to affordability and accessibility in cloud infrastructure, crucial for the development and deployment of AI technologies.
Selina Yuan, President of the International Business of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, emphasized the importance of cloud infrastructure as a cornerstone for AI’s future.
“Our commitment lies in ensuring that the foundation for AI development remains affordable,” Yuan stated, underlining the company’s dedication to facilitating customers’ growth by making AI technologies more accessible in terms of cost efficiency and the availability of proven technologies.
This pricing overhaul is designed to benefit both new and existing customers, encompassing a variety of payment models for Elastic Compute Service (ECS), including pay-as-you-go, subscriptions, and savings plans.
Notably, the initiative introduces substantial savings for international businesses opting for the pay-as-you-go billing model, with up to 30 per cent and 59 per cent reductions for ECS and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) respectively.
Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud is introducing the new Object Storage Service (OSS)-Resource plan, allowing customers to reserve storage capacity in a specific region for a year at deeply discounted rates. This strategic pricing adjustment is aimed particularly at small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with the price of a popular 500 GB storage plan being reduced to USD16.99 from USD63.
The pricing strategy extends to database products, including ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL and big data products like MaxCompute, with long-term packages seeing price reductions of up to 50 per cent. Additionally, Alibaba Cloud has increased the free monthly usage of its Cloud Data Transfer Service from 20GB to 200GB for international customers, underscoring its commitment to cost-efficiency.
In conjunction with these pricing adjustments, Alibaba Cloud unveiled a series of innovative product features and services to streamline AI processes for customers worldwide.
This includes the introduction of a managed large language models (LLMs) service and the PAI-Lingjun Intelligent Computing Service in Singapore, offering a comprehensive platform for AI computing tasks.
Alibaba Cloud’s AI-driven sustainability solution, Energy Expert, has also received an upgrade with the introduction of an open API service, enhancing its carbon and energy microservices developed using LLM capabilities.
This move not only facilitates the creation of customized sustainability applications but also improves the underlying generative AI models for better outcomes.
Operating 89 availability zones in 30 regions globally and supporting over four million customers, Alibaba Cloud continues to solidify its position as a leading force in the cloud computing industry.
According to the 2023 Gartner® report, it is ranked as the world’s third-largest and the Asia Pacific’s leading IaaS provider, a testament to its ongoing innovation and commitment to customer empowerment in the AI era.
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