Saudi Arabia: Huge partnership with “Ali Baba Cloud” in the field...

          Through joint investments of one billion dollars and regional management of operations in the region            
           
Today, a strategic partnership was announced in Saudi Arabia between the Alibaba Group, the technology giant in China, and the Saudi company STC, with investments of one billion dollars to provide high-performance public cloud services in the Kingdom.  This partnership includes choosing the capital, Riyadh, as a regional center for management and training for the Chinese group in the region. 

This partnership, led by the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, in support of the country’s digital transformation system, comes in light of “Vision 2030”, which aims to build a strong digital economy and enable bold capital in innovative investments that provide the best solutions according to the highest international practices.

Faisal Al-Khamisi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, said: “This partnership is a strategy for the Kingdom and essential to support the ambitious digital infrastructure,” indicating that cloud computing is a cornerstone and foundation for the development of any digital infrastructure in any country in the world. From this standpoint, we were keen to complete this partnership and see the light before the end of 2021.

In turn, Eng. Nasser Al-Nasser, CEO of STC Group, considered the partnership with Alibaba Cloud to be a major achievement in the efforts to achieve “Vision 2030”. Noting that both parties committed themselves to paying investments totaling one billion dollars, at a rate of 500 million dollars for each party. The Chinese tech giant is often a trusted partner in the field of cloud services.

“We are extremely proud and grateful to have these two major companies brought together with the support of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones,” said Jerry Lee, managing partner of eWTP Arabia Capital Fund. We believe this should support our portfolio of companies, as well as local startups, and the local system will become more competitive in the future.

Alibaba Cloud is considered one of the best cloud service providers in the world. The public cloud services, which it will provide within the framework of the current partnership in the Kingdom, will include the latest developments in the public cloud platform used to support the business of the Alibaba Group, while advancing the digitization of local institutions and small companies to higher levels.

Cloud computing is a major enabler of digital transformation and an essential tributary to building a strong digital economy, and this new investment comes after the Kingdom’s adoption of policies and legislation that stimulate investment in the cloud computing sector, such as the policy of cloud computing first, an indication of the robustness of the digital infrastructure in the Kingdom and the development of the regulatory environment and the environment for doing business. The impact of the qualitative leaps achieved by the Kingdom in international digital indicators also reflected on investor confidence. Cloud computing will drive innovation and provide creative platforms for entrepreneurs to enter the market quickly and at the lowest costs.

It is noteworthy that the initiatives adopted by Saudi Arabia within the framework of “Vision 2030” have achieved important numbers that have placed the Kingdom as the highest country in the world in terms of the speed of progress in the ranking of the digital infrastructure index, as the Kingdom advanced 40 places, to rank 8 among the Group of Twenty countries in the 2020 report Issued by the United Nations to measure the development of e-government.