KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 17): Chinese cloud computing company, Alibaba Cloud is urging more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to utilise cloud computing to keep up with the rapid pace of digital transformation.

Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Malaysia general manager Jordy Cao said some SMEs may not understand cloud services, so they would need a plug-and-play service or a software which can be provided by financial technology companies such as Malaysian-based Revenue Monster.

“Cloud service is unavoidable, and cloud digital transformation in Malaysia is happening rapidly.

"We (Alibaba Cloud and Revenue Monster) provide custom-made solutions to help customers in different stages and needs to grow their businesses accordingly," he said during the virtual “Alibaba Cloud: Malaysia Media Roundtable: Accelerating Digital Transformation Through Intelligent Cloud” session, today.

Cloud services refer to a wide range of services delivered on-demand to companies and customers over the internet.

These services are designed to provide easy and affordable access to applications and resources, without the need for internal infrastructure or hardware.

Asked if the lack of funding might have led to the slow pick up in cloud services adoption, Cao said even without the cloud, SMEs would still need a system to manage the cost of employees, maintenance and utilities, among others, which need to run concurrently and at a high cost.

"But when they choose to adopt cloud service, they can spend it step-by-step, based on their needs and growth of their business, and can easily scale up and down when business fluctuates.

"Alibaba is committed to bringing the most cost-effective solution offering to the market, not only in Malaysia, but globally.

“We provide different packages on our website every month or season, plus promotional packages like free servers, free database, free storage, and others," he said.

Meanwhile, Revenue Monster chief executive officer, Amanda Chin said with Alibaba Cloud, SMEs would be able to focus more on their business direction and strategy.

“SMEs need not worry about maintaining the infrastructure as it will be backed up by cloud service providers such as Alibaba Cloud and Revenue Monster.

“Every SME should use cloud technologies. For companies that do not have a strong Information Technology (IT) team, they can team up with local Internet service providers like us to help resolve IT issues and challenges,” she said.

During the recent 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, Alibaba Cloud provided support to enable 583,000 concurrent transactions per second.

New core technologies provided by Alibaba Cloud supported the event which generated US$74.1 billion (US$1=RM4.04) in gross merchandise value (GMV).

This includes the large deployment of cloud-native technology, hyperscale data centres, third-generation intelligent robots and live streaming artificial intelligence (AI) translation.