Philbert Shih on Massive-Scale Cloud and Aliyun Growth

• June 10, 2016

Source: South China Morning Post

“We are projecting substantial growth for Alibaba Cloud that would already be right at historical record highs for the cloud industry,” Philbert Shih, the managing director at Canadian firm Structure Research, told the South China Morning Post.

According to Structure Research, Alibaba Cloud is predicted to generate US$1.45 billion in sales by 2017, up from an estimated US$761 million this year.

That would enable the Chinese firm to corner 4.7 per cent of the forecast US$31 billion, global massive-scale cloud infrastructure services market in 2017.

“Alibaba is making huge investments [in its cloud business] and could beat our projections,” Shih said.

Last year, Alibaba Cloud had a 3.4 per cent global market share. That was enough, however, for the company to become the top cloud infrastructure services provider in the Asia-Pacific, according to Structure Research.

It said Amazon Web Services, by comparison, posted revenue of US$7.88 billion last year for a 70.7 per cent global market share.