Amazon unit bullish on cloud services market growth

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is banking on the rapid growth of the cloud computing market in China and stepping up efforts to offer more cloud services and products to boost digital transformation efforts of enterprises and sustain innovation.

Gu Fan, general manager of product management and go-to-market strategy at AWS China, said the company launched more than 150 cloud computing services in the country during the first half of this year and is bullish on the prospects of the burgeoning sector.

According to Gu, as Amazon's cloud service platform, AWS plans to speed up the landing of new cloud services and functions in China in accordance with the demands of Chinese customers, as part of its broader drive to help Chinese enterprises digitize their operations and enhance working efficiency.

With the explosive growth of the data volume of Chinese enterprises, there is an urgent need for big data processing and analysis, Gu said.

China is one of AWS' largest business geographies. It set up AWS China (Beijing) Region, operated by Beijing Sinnet Technology Co Ltd, in 2016, and AWS China (Ningxia) Region, operated by Ningxia Western Cloud Data Technology Co Ltd, in 2017.

So far, domestic tech heavyweights such as Midea Group, Xiaomi Corp, Cheetah Mobile and Hisense Group and some fast-growing start-ups have used the global infrastructure and cloud services of AWS to empower their globalization push and make them more agile with lower costs.

The cloud computing market in China reached 133.4 billion yuan ($19.1 billion) in 2019, up 38.61 percent from 2018, according to a white paper released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. It is expected that the market will grow rapidly in the next three years and reach nearly 400 billion yuan by 2023.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a guideline in 2018 proposing that by 2020, cloud computing will be widely used in the production, operation and management of enterprises, and there will be 1 million more enterprises using cloud computing in China.

"China is driving national reform through the new infrastructure initiative, and the public cloud is playing a key role in powering adaptive enterprises. As one of the leaders in global public cloud market, the acceleration of AWS in cloud services in China will effectively provide more competitive options for enterprises in China and worldwide to modernize applications and drive digital transformation," said Charlie Dai, a principal analyst at Forrester, a business strategy and economic consultancy.

According to research firm Canalys, the global cloud computing industry is dominated by US tech giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google and these firms together held a 55-percent share of the overall market in 2019.

In comparison, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, accounted for 46.4 percent of China's cloud computing market last year, followed by Tencent Cloud (18 percent) and Baidu Cloud (8.8 percent).