MANILA - Alibaba Cloud on Tuesday said it would build a data center in the Philippines to support digital transformation in the country and to further expand its footprint in Asia.

The new data center will be constructed in Manila this year, which will broaden the reach of the firm's services in the country, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group said in a press briefing.

Alibaba Cloud, which offers elastic computing, database security, network services, machine learning and data analytics, among others, entered the Philippine market in 2019.

"With our first data center in the country, we will be able to better support Philippine enterprises in adopting cloud technologies and preparing for a digital-first future," Cloud Intelligence General Manager for Hong Kong, Macau and Philippines Leo Liu told reporters.

"On the past years, the Philippine digital economy still keeps growing...They are well-positioned to take advantage of these cloud adoption opportunities. We are committed to helping Filipino enterprises on their digital transformation journey," he added

Liu said the Philippines was chosen due to the huge demand for cloud infrastructure, its emerging internet industry, large and young population, and the country's startup space.

It also aims to train 50,000 local IT professionals and help 5,000 businesses migrate online by 2023, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Philippines country manager Allen Guo told reporters.

Most companies in the Philippines have ramped up investments in technology and shifted to digital as Filipinos relied more on the internet for their daily needs.

"We have witnessed the faster business growth thanks to the increasing demand of cloud-based digitalization of Philippines businesses...We will help more and more Filipino enterprises reach their transformation target," Guo said.

"With local talent and talent program, I believe we can train and certify more local talents and we can also share this kind of capability, cloud, IT, analytics, to many enterprises," he added.

Guo said services were also "tailored" for the needs of Filipino companies, which many are still in the early stages of adoption.

So far, Alibaba Cloud has partnered with 20 companies in the retail, healthcare, FinTech, IT, BPO, media and education industries.

The project is part of the company's $1 billion investment in the Asia-Pacific which was earmarked to cultivate digital talent pool, empower developers and support the growth of startups in the region.

Alibaba Group was founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma. AliExpress, Lazada, DingTalk, among others, are also part of its portfolio.

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