Amazon to open cloud-computing service in China

Amazon.com announced on Wednesday its plans for a limited preview of its cloud-computing offering to clients in China - Amazon Web Services.

The limited preview is expected to start in early 2014, said Andy Jassy, senior vice-president of AWS.

According to Jassy, a select group of China-based and multinational companies will be invited to begin using AWS services in the AWS China region to build their businesses and run their applications in the cloud.

China will be the fourth region in the Asia-Pacific and the 10th region globally to get access to Amazon's cloud computing service, which has the potential to grow into Amazon's largest sector by revenue in the coming years.

"China represents an important long-term market segment for AWS. We are looking forward to working with Chinese customers, partners, and government institutions to help small and large organizations use cloud computing to innovate and deploy faster, save money, expand their geographic reach, and do so without sacrificing security, availability, data durability, and reliability," said Jassy.

He said AWS has about 100,000 clients globally, 5,000 out of which are Chinese clients that use the company's cloud computing service outside China.

In a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday, Amazon also signed a memorandum of understanding with both of the governments in Beijng and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region to develop cloud-computing services.

AWS is expected to run its China business from Beijing, while building a data center in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, which has the advantage of low-cost power.

Offering cloud-computing services inside China puts Amazon into closer competition with Alibaba, China's e-commerce giant, which has also been taking steps to become a one-stop shop for doing business online, said analysts.