Alibaba to enter European cloud computing market in mid-2017

As it seeks to expand its global reach outside China, Alibaba Cloud announced that it will introduce “MaxCompute,” to Europe’s US$18.9 billion cloud computing market in the second half of 2017.

The E.U. cloud market is smaller than, say, its U.S. counterpart, but it is already populated by the likes of Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft and IBM, setting the stage for competition. Alibaba said it hopes to get a piece of this action by convincing E.U. businesses that it’s artificial intelligence (AI) features can, “unlock the immense value of their data, using a highly secure and scalable cloud infrastructure and AI programs,” said Wanli Min, an Alibaba Cloud scientist responsible for AI and data-mining.

The Chinese cloud provider’s AI program is already popular in China, where it has been applied to easing traffic congestion, diagnosing disease through medical imaging, and even predicting the winners of reality show contests.

MaxCompute intends to deliver these same services to the E.U. market, using advanced AI and deep -earning technologies and algorithms for data storage, modeling and analytics.

Alibaba Cloud opened its first European data center in Germany in late 2016. The company has not revealed what it’s E.U. customer base looks like, but said it is in discussions with companies in Europe about using MaxCompute.