Alibaba Cloud, the data-centre business arm of Alibaba Group Holding, has opened its first data centres in the UK.

Two London sites are now operational as Alibaba aims for global cloud dominance.

The Chinese giant has opened two sites in London, saying it based its decision on ‘rapidly growing customer demand’.  “The United Kingdom is one of the fastest-growing European markets for Alibaba Cloud,” the company’s spokesperson said.

Bloomberg claims that this ‘rapidly growing customer demand’ means mostly government institutions and organisations, with national authorities moving to the cloud quite fast.

Still, the law forces them to keep the data within its national borders, which is why Alibaba came to them.