Alibaba Cloud is slashing prices of up to 59 percent for its public cloud products for international customers using its China-based data centres. The move aims to make core computing resources more accessible for such customers to tap the growth in the AI era.
The new pricing strategy covers five core public cloud product categories compute, storage, network, database, and big data products.
“Cloud infrastructure is poised to be the key cornerstone for the future of AI, and our commitment lies in making sure that the foundation for AI development remains affordable. Our latest pricing strategy is designed not only to reward long-term subscribers with more substantial discounts, but also to ensure that businesses can have a stable foundation to develop their long-term strategies when planning and developing their own AI applications,” said Selina Yuan, President of International Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
The new pricing is applicable to both existing and new customers who order from the official Alibaba Cloud website.
Reductions will apply to a variety of payment models of Elastic Compute Service (ECS), including pay-as-you-go, subscriptions and savings plans, encompassing the majority of ECS instance types and generations. International businesses who prefer pay-as-you-go billing model can reduce cost by up to 30 percent and 59 percent of ECS and Elastic Block Storage (EBS) respectively.
To maintain a stable cost-efficiency throughout the next 12 months, the new Object Storage Service (OSS)-Resource plan enables customers to reserve storage capacity in a specific region for one year to enjoy higher discount. The one-year package of 500GB storage plan, which is popular among SMEs, has been cut from US$63.00 to US$6.99.
Users of database products, including ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL, ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL, ApsaraDB RDS for MariaDB, ApsaraDB for Redis and ApsaraDB for MongoDB, will also enjoy price reductions in long-term packages, spanning from one to five years, by up to 50 percent. Big data products, including MaxCompute, Hologres, DataWorks, Realtime Compute for Apache Flink, and Open Search, will offer cuts on one- to three-year subscription plans by as much as 50 percent.
Alibaba Cloud has also increased the free monthly usage of Cloud Data Transfer Service from 20GB to 200GB for international customers. Cloud Data Transfer Service is a network product providing complete control over the volume and cost of data transfers incurred across services as well as generating bills.
Boosting generative AI development
To simplify AI processes for its global clients, Alibaba Cloud has rolled out a range of product features and services.
The tech giant aims to democratise AI usage by introducing a managed large language models (LLMs) service that provides access to specialised experts dedicated to simplifying the integration and operation of LLMs across model architecture and cloud infrastructure. This allows businesses to focus on leveraging the business value of LLMs without grappling with technical complexities.
It has also launched in Singapore the PAI-Lingjun Intelligent Computing Service that caters to high-performance computing tasks, including foundation model training and inference. Alibaba Cloud offers full-process AI engineering capabilities, covering AI development, training and computing resource management.
The Energy Expert AI-driven sustainability solution has received significant enhancements. With the introduction of an open API service, it now offers carbon and energy micro-services, developed using LLM capabilities and domain-specific knowledge. These services facilitate functionalities such as carbon footprint calculation, emission optimisation, and energy consumption monitoring and forecasting. Developers can leverage these microservices to build customised sustainability applications while refining generative AI models for improved outcomes.
Strengthening its global partnership ecosystem, Alibaba Cloud has unveiled a suite of financial incentives. These incentives include increased standard discounts and commission rates for resellers, the elimination of initial tier requirements and yearly commitments for resellers, and enhanced support for channel partners seeking to expand their market presence.
Additionally, Alibaba Cloud has standardised its training empowerment programme to enhance partners’ service delivery competencies. It has introduced a specialised partner service manager role to provide dedicated support to partners, further solidifying its commitment to fostering collaborative relationships within its ecosystem.
Alibaba Cloud operates 89 availability zones in 30 regions globally, supporting more than four million customers worldwide.
Entelechy Asia 