Arrow Electronics becomes Alibaba Cloud’s first UK distributor

Alibaba Cloud has continued its EMEA expansion by entering into a new distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics.

Under the new partnership, Arrow will become one of the firms' EMEA distributors, as well as its first distributor in the UK. This means it will offer the data intelligence arm of the Alibaba Group's full suite of solutions built on the Alibaba Cloud infrastructure to businesses and channel customers across the region.

“Growing rapidly, Alibaba Cloud is one of the biggest public cloud providers globally, and our agreement [will] bring, in particular, smaller and medium channel players the opportunity to work with Alibaba Cloud in the EMEA market,” said Alexis Brabant, vice president of sales for Arrow’s EMEA enterprise computing solutions business.

“As we are moving into the world of multi-cloud, our clients can now choose from an even broader range and variety of solutions and services tailored to their end-customer’s needs.”

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud has now grown to operate 61 availability zones across 20 regions worldwide. Last year, Alibaba Cloud began building its presence in the UK with the opening of two data centres in the London area, adding to its existing bases in Frankfurt and mainland China.

The firm said its expansion into the region will help more businesses reap the benefits of its products and services, with Arrow best-placed to help bring customer cloud ambitions to fruition.

While Arrow is the first UK distributor to be signed by the company, the deal is not exclusive, and the cloud giant confirmed that it is actively in the process of further expanding its channel ecosystem in Europe and the UK by pursuing agreements with distributors, resellers, and systems integrators.

“As a global leader in data intelligence, we understand the opportunities that cloud technologies can create for their channel partners,” added Max Tao, senior manager of alliances at Alibaba Cloud International.

“We are excited to collaborate with Arrow for its first-class services, cloud-enablement capabilities and local expertise. We will work together to help more regional and local channel companies start their journey into cloud and data intelligence.”