Alibaba Cloud arrives in Israel under Sela Ltd.

Leading cloud service provider Alibaba Cloud will now be available for use in Israel, the Alibaba Group announced on Wednesday, marking the first step in its expansion into the Asia Pacific region.

The cloud service provider is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of the Alibaba Group, and its presence in Israel will be under Sela Ltd., a leading cloud service provider of solutions from Microsoft, Google Cloud and AWS.

Under the partnership, Sela will offer Alibaba Cloud’s cloud service and solutions to Israeli businesses to accelerate their digital ventures and support their global expansion, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

Alibaba Cloud is the largest cloud service provider in the Asia Pacific region and one of the top three worldwide cloud service providers, according to research companies Gartner and IDC.

Alibaba Cloud provides a suite of cloud-computing services to businesses worldwide, including start-ups, corporations, developers and organizations in more than 200 regions worldwide.

Speaking about the company’s entry into the Israeli market, Sela CEO Ron Sprinzak said it would “diversify the toolbox which is available to leading companies, many of which want to manage their activity over the cloud.”

Additionally, he said, Sela will be able to “assist companies wishing to expand into Far East markets by leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s visibility in these markets, providing access to hundreds of millions of users.

“With its headquarters in China, Alibaba Cloud has a deep understanding of the opportunities, as well as the complexities, of this market. This has led it to develop exceptional solutions for clients wishing to operate in the Chinese market. This enables Alibaba Cloud to become the gateway for technology and other companies wishing to operate in China, and in Asia in general,” Sprinzak concluded.

Raymond Ma, general manager of Europe, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said of the deal, “We are excited to partner with Sela to assist Israeli businesses in achieving digital transformation and global expansion through deploying Alibaba Cloud’s cutting-edge cloud technologies and solutions. Looking ahead, we are committed to creating beneficial innovations through this collaboration.”

By entering the Israeli market, Alibaba Cloud will be able to offer its expertise in cloud technology to a new market and provide solutions to elastic compute, database, security, storage and network services and machine-learning and data-analytics capabilities to different industries in Israel.

Sela, controlled by the Fortissimo Fund, employs more than 300 staff members in Israel, India, Canada, Singapore and the US. Among the company’s portfolio of hundreds of clients are some of the leading companies in Israel, including many technology companies such as Check Point, AudioCodes, Rafael, eToro and others.