Cloud wars: China’s deep-pocketed Alibaba takes on AWS

China’s Alibaba Group Holding last week said it would invest $1 billion into its Aliyun cloud computing arm to challenge Amazon Web Services. This move kicks off what could become a global battle between the two e-commerce giants. Also, it could change the dynamics in the cloud market now dominated by AWS, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.

 

A billon dollars is not chump change, but it’s not a game-changing amount, either. For example, last year IBM invested $1.2 billion to significantly expand its global cloud footprint. IBM already had a good head start in the cloud when it tossed in that $1.2 billion, yet that investment is unlikely to catch IBM up to AWS…

What’s the deal with Alibaba’s day-late-and-a-dollar-short strategy — or is it actually five years late and about $4 billion short?…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/2957249/cloud-computing/cloud-wars-chinas-deep-pocketed-alibaba-takes-on-aws.html