Alibaba named as Salesforce's exclusive provider in China
Salesforce and Alibaba have signed a strategic partnership that will see the Chinese tech giant become the exclusive provider of Salesforce in China.
According to Salesforce, Alibaba will bring Salesforce's CRM platform -- including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Salesforce Platform -- to customers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
At the same time, Salesforce will become the exclusive enterprise CRM product suite sold by Alibaba.
"Alibaba's advanced, secure infrastructure and knowledge of these markets will empower our global customers with a solution that meets local business needs," Salesforce said.
"We look forward to developing this partnership with Alibaba as we continue to drive success for companies around the world."
On Tuesday, Alibaba opened its e-commerce platform to US sellers for the first time. The 20 year-old platform is already open to US buyers -- in fact, Alibaba says that one third of Alibaba.com's buyers are US businesses.
Alibaba has already signed up Office Depot and the global produce company Robinson Fresh as sellers on the marketplace, but it's primarily targeting small businesses.
Meanwhile, the Chinese company's cloud business, Alibaba Cloud, continues to gain traction after reporting that its cloud computing revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter was $1.15 billion, up 76% from a year ago, as customers spent more on new services.
Alibaba's total revenue for the fourth quarter was $13.9 billion, up 51% from a year ago.
Alibaba Cloud also recently expanded its offering to service Brazil, which will be represented by Brazilian cloud computing firm UOL Diveo as its channel partner in the country.
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