Following the Circuit Breaker measures implemented by Singapore in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Alibaba Cloud has noted a distinct and growing demand for cloud technologies, particularly among the local SMEs.
Alibaba Cloud states the more than 50 percent surge in demand reflects the pressing need for businesses to embrace technologies for continued operation, when Singapore’s general mobility came to a standstill during the lockdown.
Since early January of this year, Alibaba Cloud has partnered with a number of companies, including SMEs from various industries, in order to expedite their digitalisation capabilities and migrate their offline businesses rapidly to an online platform.
The deployment solutions meant companies can start running their operations on cloud in under 48 hours, drastically increasing their business resilience throughout the pandemic, Alibaba Cloud states.
The company has identified certain key areas that cloud services can be beneficial supported by real world examples. This includes guaranteeing delivery services, ensuring business continuity, supporting employee’s wellbeing, and enabling remote education.
Through a partnership with SCash, Alibaba Cloud are able to help businesses reach customers online and go digital quickly in a cost-efficient manner. The implementation of cloud computing solutions for heartland businesses allow them to transform their brick-and-mortar operations into an omnichannel one, which enables them to reach out to customers stuck at home, the company states.
To date, more than 170 heartland enterprises have signed up for the Alibaba Cloud-SCash initiative for rapid digital transformation.
“Alibaba decided to go all-in with technology during the 2003 SARS epidemic, back when we were still a SME and on the verge of launching our Taobao e-commerce platform,” said Derek Wang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Singapore.
“When COVID-19 stuck, we felt the struggle and the pain faced by Singaporean local companies. We therefore want to share our know-knows and expertise with local enterprises, helping them to go through the transformation process. We believe with our ecosystem expertise from serving global customers, we can help Singaporean enterprises to seize the digitalisation opportunity out of the current crisis, and together we will help our economy to bounce back from the recession.”
