Alibaba's cloud computing subsidiary Aliyun announced that its Hong Kong data center will be formally put into today, May 12.

Following those in Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Beijing, the Hong Kong data center becomes the company's fourth site.

This new data center is jointly built and operated by Aliyun and Hong Kong Towngas Telecom. The network's optical fiber will not only connect to mainland China, but also cover international carriers in Hong Kong, Singapore, U.K., U.S., and Europe. With the help of the data center, Aliyun will provide cloud computing services to users in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the world.

Wang Wenbin, president of Aliyun, said that the Hong Kong data center will become a network channel for Chinese enterprises that expand into overseas markets and overseas companies that serve Chinese users. Wang said that in old days if Chinese Internet companies want to provide services to overseas users, they needed to rent or deploy local servers, which brings various troubles like language, local laws, license registrations, policies, and currency exchanges. With Aliyun, these companies will be able to realize convenient and rapid website and service latency deployment from China.

Wang added that Chinese enterprises have large demands for business expansion in Southeast Asia and many game developers, consumer electronics and e-commerce companies take Southeast Asia as their first stop for overseas expansion. Targeting the Southeast Asia market, Hong Kong has obvious geographical and market advantages. In addition, Hong Kong has speed and capacity advantages for network connection to Europe and America, which can meet the demands of international users.