Salesforce and Alibaba unveil China partnership

Salesforce and Alibaba announced a new partnership that sees the Chinese tech firm become the exclusive provider of Salesforce’s CRM services in Greater China.

The move launches Salesforce in China, as well as Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong, through Alibaba Cloud, which will exclusively provide Salesforce services such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Platform to clients. Alibaba will also only sell the Salesforce CRM product suite to clients.

Speaking at the Alibaba Cloud Summit in Shanghai yesterday, Ryan Aytay, Salesforce executive vice president of strategic partnerships, said: “With Alibaba’s strong, advanced and secure cloud infrastructure network and insight into the Chinese market, both parties will provide the best localised solutions for our global customers.”

According to Gartner, Alibaba Cloud is the largest cloud-computing service in Asia-Pacific. The Salesforce deal could help strengthen its position against rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Ken Shen Tao, vice president of Alibaba Could Intelligence, said the combination of Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure and data intelligence platform with Salesforce’s CRM solutions “will provide global customers with incredible customer experiences at every touchpoint”.