Alibaba Cloud’s new public cloud region in Johor to serve both Malaysian and Singaporean customers

Alibaba Cloud’s second public cloud region in Malaysia will not only serve Malaysian customers but also available to other customers and other countries, including Singapore.

Alibaba Cloud now has 104 availability zones across 32 regions globally, following the launch of the new Johor public cloud region in Malaysia. The new cloud region, with two new data centers will focus on services customers in Malaysia with demand for the Chinese tech company’s cloud and AI services increasing in the region.

In a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur, Choong Hon Keat, General Manager of Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence shared that Alibaba Cloud now operates five data centers in Malaysia, forming its largest infra footprint in Southeast Asia.

“The Johor Public Cloud Region will have two data center established and support the latest AI initiatives in the country, providing customers with low latency, better resilience and more innovative solutions and products,” Choong said.

While the Chinese tech company’s current customers in Malaysia span across various industries including the public sector, enterprise, e-commerce, and financial services, Choong also mentioned that Alibaba Cloud has been supporting the SMB and MicroSMB companies in the country in their digital journey.

“We do see the AI adoption has been increasing tremendously also because of the government driving initiatives,” he said.

When asked if the data centers will support Singapore’s growing need for compute power given the close proximity of the new cloud region to the city state, Choong explained that as a public cloud region, customers from other countries will be able to use it as well.

“It is a public cloud region, so we do serve not only Malaysia customers, that's for sure. Because when it's a public cloud, it means that it also allows other customers or allow other countries to use it. So, yes, Singapore definitely will also be using it,” he said.

Working with partners

From a partner ecosystem perspective, Choong pointed out that Alibaba Cloud has onboarded more than 300 partners in Malaysia since setting their presence here. This includes local system integrators, resellers and distributors that have signed with them.

“Throughout the years, we have not only enabled them from a technology enablement perspective, but we also work closely with them in terms of serving our customers. The customers range from enterprise customers to even small, medium customers, whereby we also help them in enabling their customers in terms of their knowledge in cloud computing,” Choong said.

He added that in the last two years, Alibaba Cloud has also been conducting a lot of AI-related training and enablement to these partners.

“Because when we train our partners, the partners can train their users, and the partners can train more people, and that's what we have been doing regularly,” he said.

Dealing with increasing token cost

Lin En Shu, Head of Solutions Architect of Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence also shared some of the latest innovations from Alibaba Cloud including the latest models and the recently announced Qwen 3.7-Max which was unveiled at the inaugural international Qwen Conference in Singapore. Shu also shared updated on the launch of Qwen Cloud, an AI-native platform designed to serve both human users and AI agents.

When asked how Alibaba Cloud is dealing with the increasing cost of tokens globally, Shu acknowledged that while tokens are the fuel for AI, the future is all about Alibaba Cloud evolving its capability to match the best while really making it much more economical.

“If you look at our token pricing, it's really a fraction of the cost of the best. So, for you to be able to use top tier, on par, front tier, with the best while paying a fraction of the cost will be important when it becomes your day-to-day life, or when using it at scale. So that's how we address it,” Shu said.

For Choong, as a multi-level cloud, it is really about cost-effectiveness.

“We don't say that we are the cheapest or we don't say that we are the most expensive, but at the end of the day, we are working towards cost-effectiveness. This means how customers can use us to achieve the lowest possible price that they pay. This is something that we have always been helping our customers to do,” he said.

Meeting data sovereignty requirements

According to Alibaba Cloud, as a global leading cloud service provider, data privacy and protection is a top priority for the Chinese tech company. It is committed to complying with the local rules and regulations in Malaysia, and in other parts of the world that it operates in.

With more than 150 security and compliance accreditations worldwide, Alibaba Cloud deeply ingrains the concept of privacy protection and data security into its practices, making full use of privacy technology to achieve data sharing in a trusted environment.

According to a statement by Alibaba Cloud, its first cloud-based Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Center in Malaysia will help to mitigate risks and offer customers a high level of protection against stronger DDoS attacks. As one of the first global cloud providers entering into the market, Alibaba Cloud also expects to continue to invest in the market and comply with the local regulations and laws as always.

Interestingly, Shu mentioned that there are Chinese customers which presence in Malaysia that are using Alibaba Cloud.

“They're using our AI, they're using our GPUs in Malaysia because their data resides in Malaysia. So, this is actually purpose-built for Malaysians knowing that data sovereignty is really a big thing here in Malaysia, especially for most of the financial customers which needs to comply to regulations, including government agencies,” he said.

Specifically, Shu explained that while Alibaba Cloud may not have the most powerful GPUs, its good enough for inferencing, which is what most customers in the Malaysian market are using the models for.

“That means inference being served locally from GPUs locally. So therefore, the data stays within the country,” he said.