Ambitious Alibaba takes aim at the kings of cloud computing

HANGZHOU, CHINA - OCTOBER 13: (CHINA OUT) Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., speaks during the launching ceremony of the Alibaba's Tmall 11.11 Global Shopping Festival at the company's headquarters on October 13, 2015 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province of China. Alibaba will open offices in three European countries and expand further in the U.S as it seeks to revive growth and reassure jittery investors. The 11.11 Global Shopping event this year will cover more than 200 countries throughout the world in large-scale businesses. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

When you think of the biggest cloud players in the world, one company you might not consider is Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that held a record $25 billion U.S. IPO in 2014. Alibaba entered the cloud computing business in 2009, just three years after Amazon launched its cloud division, AWS — and Alibaba’s cloud computing efforts are among the ambitious projects that… Read More