On Aug. 9 and 10, Alibaba Cloud held a cloud computing conference in Beijing. At the conference, Alibaba announced its plan to build an additional headquarters in Singapore to manage overseas business. The company already has a headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

Now, Alibaba will found a local group to follow various data security rules set by other countries across the world and establish an Internet Data Center (IDC) in Singapore. Together, the two headquarters will be in charge of all data on the Alibaba cloud.

“Data from all countries and the oversight of networks will be operated by the two hubs,” explained by Yu Sichen, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global.

“Alibaba Cloud’s services need to meet the standards of different markets since most customers tend to adopt local data. EU, Southeast Asia, Japan, North America and even China—different countries apply different standards. Dual hubs can better manage these rules. ” explained Li Jin, director of R&D for Alibaba Cloud, in an interview with thepaper.cn.

As for the location of the new hub, Li explained that although the North American and European markets are relatively mature, the largest emerging market is Asia, and especially India. Alibaba Cloud hopes to reinforce its presence in emerging markets. Singapore is a place with strict rules for cloud computing and data management. Given this strict foundation, Li said, it will be easier to enter other countries.

Singapore may be just a beginning, with more hubs for Alibaba Cloud to come in the future. At present, Alibaba Cloud has Internet Data Centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the west and east coasts of the U.S. By the end of the year, Alibaba Cloud will launch new IDCs in Europe, Australia, the Middle East and Japan.

Hu Xiaoming, president of Alibaba Cloud, sees an opportunity to provide service for enterprises at home and abroad since so many overseas companies want to come to China, while many Chinese companies want to compete in international markets. In the next year, Alibaba Cloud plans to invite over 50 international software service providers to their platform, including SAP and SUSE, to diversify Alibaba Cloud’s software service. The company also plans to help over 100 Chinese service providers enter international markets.