阿里、软银借SB云抢滩日本

软银公司旗下的电信子公司和阿里巴巴的云产品阿里云（Aliyun）特别建立了一个名为SB云（SB Cloud）的新公司，为“从初创公司到跨国公司”在内的商业用户提供类似亚马逊云服务（Amazon Web Services）的功能。

阿里巴巴将拥有公司60%的股份，软银拥有40%，不过融资条件尚未公布，他们将在何时开始提供云服务也尚不明了。

两大科技巨头联手将目标对准了日本。该国是云服务的全球第二大市场，仅次于美国。

位于西雅图的亚马逊云服务是公共云计算市场的先驱。在这个市场上，用户可以向拥有大量计算能力、存储空间和网络带宽的供应商租用这些产品。对于公司而言，这样的好处在于他们不必为了偶尔或突发的计算需求而建立自己的数据中心，只需要掏钱就能解决问题。例如，零售商只需要在促销甩卖的天数租用额外的负载量即可。

到目前为止，亚马逊仍然在该市场保持着领先地位。他们在东京和全球其他十几个地区拥有数据中心区。微软（Microsoft）Azure是全球第二大的公共云网络，在东京和大阪也建有数据中心。但阿里巴巴正在美国国内外挑战亚马逊的地位。在去年，公司建造了自己的云设施，供美国企业使用。

公共云计算是一个全球市场，亚马逊、微软、IBM和其他公司都在世界各地建立数据中心，以更好地为当地公司服务。例如，本周早些时候，微软就宣布了在韩国建立两个全新数据中心区的计划。

尽管公共云旨在远程提供信息技术服务，但把数据中心建在靠近用户的地方十分重要，因为距离会带来操作的延迟或延误。因此，云计算就像房地产一样，位置决定一切。预计在世界各地争相建立数据中心的趋势还会持续下去。

Specifically, Softbank’s telecom subsidiary and Alibaba Cloud, also known as Aliyun, launched a new venture called SB Cloud which will offer Amazon Web Services-like capabilities to business customers “from startups to multinational companies,” according to a statement released on Friday.

Alibaba will own 60% of the venture, Softbank 40%, but financial terms were not disclosed and it wasn’t clear when these Japanese cloud services would become available.

This pairing of two tech giants is focusing on a big market—by Japan is the second largest market for cloud services in the world after the U.S.

Seattle-based Amazon Web Services pioneered the public cloud computing market, in which customers rent the computing power, storage, and networking they need from a provider that amasses huge amounts of that technology. The attraction for companies is they can pay for what they need and not have to build out their own data center capacity for what might be intermittent or “spiky” computing needs. A retailer, for example, could rent excess capacity on big sales days.

Amazon remains the market leader by far and it hosts a data center region in Tokyo and more than a dozen more worldwide. Microsoft Azure, the second largest public cloud network, has data centers in Tokyo and Osaka. But Alibaba is challenging Amazon abroad, as well as in the U.S., where last year it launched cloud facilities of its own for use by companies in the U.S.

Public cloud computing is a global market with Amazon, Microsoft , IBM and others adding data centers around the world to better serve local companies. Earlier this week Microsoft, for example, announced plans for two new data center regions in South Korea.

While public cloud is all about supplying information technology services remotely, it’s important to put data centers close to the customers because distance adds latency, or delay, to operations. That’s why in cloud computing, as in real estate, location is everything. So expect the global land grab for data centers to continue.