In a move that highlights the zeitgeist-y nature of the cloud, Alibaba have announced their CEO Daniel Zhang will step down in order to focus on their cloud division.
Alibaba’s Cloud Spinoff
The e-commerce giant’s cloud arm is a major player in the industry, so much so that they recently announced that it will become independent from the parent company. Zhang’s relocation to the newly liberated cloud company demonstrates Alibaba’s commitment to this up and coming sector. Alibaba itself plans to split into six new business units.
Zhang has been running the cloud unit since December last year after it suffered a huge outage, said to be their “longest major-scale failure” in over a decade. In a statement about his new appointment Zhang wrote that it would be “inappropriate” for him to continue to work as CEO and Chairman of Alibaba, whilst heading up the cloud division as it becomes an independent company.
Eddie Yongming Wu, chairman of Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group, will take over as the new Alibaba CEO. And Zhang’s chairman role will be handed to current Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai. But this won’t happen until September.
Brian Wong, author of “The Tao of Alibaba” and a former employee of the company said…
“The appointment of Daniel to focus on running the cloud is really a show of confidence and trust in him to take the most precious business and run with it to develop it in the right way given this age of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The idea or expectation that one person could manage the business’ crown jewel Cloud and at the http://cloudcomputing.newshub.talkabout.tech/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/ImageGenerator_The_power_of_the_internet_transforms_the_future__9a3bc078-cc4e-4837-b985-2d7271bca32c-2.webpe time manage the entire Alibaba Group is an unreasonable expectation.”
Conclusion
It’s been estimated that the cloud unit is worth somewhere between $41 billion and $60 billion. By placing their star CEO in charge of the cloud unit Alibaba is placing a vote of confidence in the industry, it’s possibility of making them money and of course, it’s chances of competing against AWS, Microsoft and Google. Do you think Zhang will make the company a success?
