  "Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has a growing cloud computing business and a hunger for American companies. And soon, it will most likely have a large amount of cash. Will it take on the American cloud giants?
"It would be an amazing change from the way cloud computing seems to be developing. Public cloud computing is the rental of infrastructure, like raw computing power and online data storage, and sophisticated applications.
"It is a multibillion-dollar business, expected to grow much bigger, and is currently led by Amazon Web Services, or AWS; Google; and Microsoft Azure. IBM and others also have designs on the market.
"To date, all of the big global players are United States companies.
"In a recent evaluation of the cloud infrastructure business, analysts at the technology research firm Gartner counted 15 companies.
"Just two, Dimension Data and Fujitsu, were not American firms. There was no mention of Alibaba.
"Yet according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ahead of Alibaba's proposed public offering, Alibaba had revenue of $102 million from cloud and infrastructure sales last year. That was an increase of 26% from a year earlier. That is not the 50% annual growth seen at AWS, perhaps, but not bad.
"So why isn't Alibaba an international cloud contender? Particularly since, as The New York Times reported last week, it has sunk a fortune in American tech companies. A spokesman for Alibaba, citing the company's quiet period ahead of its IPO, declined to comment on its plans. But people with knowledge of the company said that Alibaba, like other possible Chinese contenders, seemed to have its hands full just handling its China business..."
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