On the move majorly to counter Amazon, Google and Microsoft, Alibaba Group-owned Alibaba Cloud has joined Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The latest development is a strategic step to bring China’s talent in line with global resources to expand open source cloud technologies and expand the market of Alibaba Cloud.
Alibaba Cloud has joined at the Gold Member tier that includes AT&T, NetApp and SUSE. Also, the cloud computing arm of the Chinese technology giant is sitting against its homegrown rival Tencent, which is also a Gold Member of CNCF.
“We are thrilled to have Alibaba Cloud, an active member of the container community, becomes a Gold Member of CNCF,” said Dan Kohn, executive director, Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “The company’s global presence from a cloud provider perspective will help CNCF to capitalise on the growing international market — attracting contributors from around the world and benefiting our technology project portfolio.”
The Linux Foundation-backed CNCF has some of the leading open source projects such as Kubernetes and containerd that all have already been receiving contributions from Alibaba Cloud. However, the Chinese entity is now planning to integrate relevant CNCF projects into its own offerings. Alibaba is also set to collaborate with fellow Foundation members to nurture its open source deliverables.
“We look forward to contributing to the CNCF community by adopting technologies developed through CNCF projects, contributing code to the projects and collaborating with fellow members,” said Tang Hong, chief architect at Alibaba Cloud.
Expanding around globe
Alibaba is yet to become a competitive cloud player in the US and global markets. While Amazon is leading the worldwide market at 33 percent share with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) as per the data provided by Synergy Research, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are predicted to mark growth in the coming months.
Nevertheless, Alibaba Cloud is leading the market in China. The company is fighting a good fight against Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
The latest development with CNCF would help Alibaba grow its presence and ultimately go beyond the Chinese boundaries. Moreover, it is likely to uplift the adoption of open source deployments in the cloud space.
