Chinese tech companies are deploying their cloud services overseas, and moving up the sector’s global rankings as they do so. According to Charlie Dai, Principal Analyst at consultancy Forrester, there are two key drivers behind their bid to tap into global markets – to better serve Chinese customers’ globalization strategies and to extend their own digital territories. “They could replicate their Chinese market successes in global regions, just as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are doing in China,” he said.

According to Gartner Research Director Kevin Ji, cloud computing is essentially about economies of scale for service providers. Expanding their coverage lowers average costs and pushes forward global infrastructure delivery. To date, only a handful of Chinese players, including Alibaba Group, Tencent and Huawei Technologies, have appeared as emerging forces in a market currently dominated by Western competitors led by Amazon.com and Microsoft, he said. “Only Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and Huawei Cloud have straightforward globalization strategies, each with a distinctive approach,” Ji said.

The cloud computing arm of Tencent announced in March the opening of four new data centers to enhance its international cloud computing presence. The new centers offer a range of solutions including storage, cloud security, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI).

“Globalization is an important part of Tencent Cloud’s strategy,” said Qiu Yuepeng, Vice president of Tencent and President of Tencent Cloud. “By offering our advanced cloud computing infrastructure across the globe, we can not only share Tencent Cloud’s technology and expand our portfolio of industry solutions, but also lower costs and increase efficiency across a variety of industries.” According to Tencent, its new data center in Hong Kong serves as Tencent Cloud’s second financial sector-focused facility in the city. Two new data centers in the United States – in Silicon Valley and Virginia – ensure coverage across the country’s east and west coasts. The fourth new data center, in Mumbai, India, will serve as a core hub for Tencent Cloud in South Asia, boosting its total number of available cloud computing zones to 42.

Alibaba’s cloud computing unit launched its first data center in Indonesia in March, aiming to address the growing demand for reliable and scalable cloud services among the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises. Alibaba Cloud has so far entered 18 countries and regions. Its latest push saw the company’s cloud services extend to Turkey in April through a partnership with e-Glober, an Istanbul-based business-to-business (B2B) services provider. Alibaba is banking on Asia and the Middle East to better tap into the Belt and Road Initiative, whereas Tencent is more closely following the steps of its clients.

Huawei’s strength lies in its ties with leading foreign telecom operators, such as Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica, helping them to build their public cloud capability using Huawei technology. With only a few years of development, some Chinese companies in the sector have started to climb the global rankings. A Gartner report released last year highlighted Alibaba’s high potential, ranking it No 4 globally for “Ability to Execute”, ahead of IBM and Oracle Systems. But Kevin Ji of Gartner said that despite their rapid development, Chinese companies still lack genuine technological breakthroughs and innovation, meaning they have very little in the way of unique differentiation compared with other providers, the China Daily reports.