Alibaba launches third German data center

Frankfurt Germany

Alibaba Cloud has launched a third data center in Germany, in the Frankfurt area.

The company said it launched the new facility to “support the growing digital transformation demands from customers across Europe”. Specifications of the facility weren’t shared.

“The third data center launch underscores our continuous commitment to serving the local German and European markets,” said Raymond Ma, general manager of Europe, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “With our proven innovations and competitive solutions that meet strict security and compliance requirements, we are determined in our mission to support our customers with their digital transformation demands.”

The company said the new data center also features free cooling operation via dry coolers – using naturally cool ambient air instead of mechanical refrigeration. The full free cooling hours is expected to reach over 7,000 hours a year.

Alibaba said the site complied with Germany’s security standards in the country’s Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalog (C5).

The company first launched a Frankfurt data center in 2016 in an agreement with Vodafone Germany to collocate their first data center at the telco’s facility in the city.

This year has seen Alibaba also launch a data center in Bangkok, Thailand. The company now operates 27 regions and 84 Availability Zones globally; Bangkok offers one availability zone.

Source: datacenterdynamics.com