CRI听力:Alibaba Steps up Global Expansion

Situated in the Silicon Valley - home of many of the world's largest tech firms and countless startups - the data center that opened on March 4th is Alibaba's first data center overseas.

The company says the data center aims to offer cloud computing services to US-based Chinese enterprises, and then gradually expand to international clients.

Yu Sicheng, Aliyun's vice president and head of its international business, explains how the data center works.

 "We have a professional team called 'IDST' in the United States. It researches our capacity to process big data so as to help us apply cutting-edge technology to our big data platforms. The team has recruited both Chinese American and local American big-data talents in order to build the world's largest data exchange platform."

Yu adds that expansion into the US is just the first step in their international strategy.

The company is planning more overseas data centers in places such as Japan, the Middle East and Europe, as it attempts to tap into a booming global cloud computing market that has reached nearly 150 billion U.S. dollars as of the end of 2014.

The new data venture is not the only example of Alibaba's effort to enhance its capacity in cloud computing.

The e-commerce giant has revealed facial recognition payment technology called "Smile to Pay", which allows users to make mobile payments with selfies.

Chairman Jack Ma showed the device during his keynote speech at the CeBit trade fair in March.

"Online payment to buy things is always a big headache. You forget your password. You worry about the security. Today we show you a new technology in the future how people buy things online. "

Backed by Aliyun cloud services, Alibaba's online retail platform Taobao managed to create 80,000 orders per second during last year's annual online shopping spree locally dubbed "Double 11."

Its third-party online payment division, Alipay, was able to handle 2.85 million payments every minute thanks to the cloud service.

During the travel rush for this year's Chinese Spring Festival, when nearly 3 billion trips were made, 12306.cn - the official train ticket sales website - had nearly 30 billion visits daily, with 75 percent of ticket inquiries being made through Aliyun cloud platforms.

For CRI, I'm Guo Yan.