Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, is opening four new data centers. A new facility in Dubai went online on Monday, with data centers in Frankfurt, Sydney, and Japan expected to go live by the end of this year.

The new centers will boost Alibaba’s data center network to 14 locations.

Middle East – The opening of the Dubai Data Center is held in conjunction with YVOLV, a joint venture of Alibaba Cloud and Meraas Holdings, a Dubai-based holding company with a portfolio spanning across economic sectors in the United Arab Emirates.

Europe – Alibaba Cloud will partner with Vodafone Germany to open its first data center in Europe. The center is co-located in Vodafone’s data facilities in Frankfurt, Germany.

Australia – Alibaba Cloud will open a new data center in Sydney, Australia by the end of 2016. A dedicated team will be based in Australia, and build up a cloud ecosystem with local technology partners, says the company.

Japan – The Japan Data Center, will be hosted by SB Cloud Corporation, a joint venture between Softbank and Alibaba Group.

Alibaba used its cloud technology for the recently completed global shopping festival, says the company, supporting 175,000 transactions per second during peak traffic spikes.

[Image courtesy: Alibaba]