Alibaba Cloud continued its rapid growth in the past fiscal year, with revenue reaching P282 billion (RMB 40 billion), an increase of 62% year-on-year.
During the pandemic, the company’s public cloud business grew rapidly, driven by the increase in video content consumption and the wide adoption of telecommuting and virtual learning. Alibaba Cloud’s cloud computing infrastructure and big-data services have also played a key role in enabling businesses to quickly resume operations and production.
“Alibaba Group’s revenue growth of 35% year-over-year was driven by solid performance of our domestic retail businesses as well as robust cloud computing revenue growth,” said Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group.
The company believes that limitations posed by the pandemic will propel the digital transformation of enterprises. Alibaba Cloud forecasts that all industries, including public sectors, will choose to move their technology infrastructure to the cloud.
For instance, DingTalk, Alibaba Cloud’s digital collaboration platform, recorded a growth in enterprises and users in China using the platform to stay connected and work remotely. DingTalk also made significant penetration in the education sector as schools adopted the platform for their teachers and students. In March 2020, DingTalk conducted an average of over 1 million active classroom sessions on each school day. DingTalk’s number of daily average active users during workdays grew significantly to 155 million in March.
Alibaba Cloud continues to reinforce its global presence to empower more businesses to adopt cloud technology in light of the new normal predicated on the pandemic. Currently, Alibaba Cloud operates in 63 availability zones in 21 regions around the world, with more global regions set to follow.