Alibaba Cloud conjures up first UK distributor

Chinese cloud giant continues UK expansion

Arrow Electronics has become the first distributor for Chinese cloud provider Alibaba Cloud in the UK.

The agreement between the pair covers EMEA and will offer cloud solutions built on Alibaba Cloud's infrastructure to businesses and channel customers in the region.

Alibaba Cloud established its presence in the UK last year with the launch of two datacentres in London and has been quietly establishing partner relationships across EMEA since.

Its partnership with Arrow follows up on its announcement last year that it was seeking a pan-European distributor.

"Growing rapidly, Alibaba Cloud is one of the biggest public cloud providers globally, and our agreement will bring, in particular, smaller and medium channel players the opportunity to work with Alibaba Cloud in the EMEA market," said Alexis Brabant, VP of sales of Arrow's enterprise computing solutions business in EMEA.

"As we are moving into the world of multi-cloud, our clients can now choose from an even broader range and variety of solutions and services tailored to their end customer's needs.

"With Alibaba Cloud, Arrow continues to build out its strong cloud solutions portfolio to serve the analytics, blockchain, AI, IoT and security applications for businesses."

Max Tao, senior manager of alliance at Alibaba Cloud International, stated: "As a global leader in data intelligence, we understand the opportunities that cloud technologies can create for channel partners.

"We are excited to collaborate with Arrow for its first-class services, cloud-enablement capabilities and local expertise. We will work together to help more regional and local channel companies start their journey into cloud and data intelligence."