BT is in talks with China’s Alibaba to form a cloud-services partnership.
The UK telco said it couldn’t provide more details on the negotiations at the moment but confirmed they were happening.
BT’s confirmation follows press reports indicating that a potential partnership between the British company’s information-technology consulting unit and the Chinese e-commerce giant could be similar to Alibaba’s deal with Vodafone Group in Germany.
Earlier this month, Alibaba and Bollore SA signed an agreement to jointly develop projects in cloud services, clean energy and mobility, logistics and other areas, as the Chinese group moves to challenge Amazon.com dominance in Europe.
Europe has become key to Alibaba Cloud’s success outside China, with prospects in the US made murky by President Donald Trump’s America First agenda. Alibaba has pulled back in the US just as tensions between America and China have escalated under Trump.
BT Global Services has struck up partnerships with AWS, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, while Spain’s Telefonica works with AWS. In Germany, while Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems has partners including China’s Huawei Technologies and Cisco, it has structured its public cloud offering as an alternative to US giants AWS and Google – touting its ability to keep data within Germany where there are strict data-protection laws, 100 percent out of reach of US authorities.
