Alibaba doubles down on Malaysia, rolls out traffic control system

Photo credit: Maks Karochkin / Flickr

Since launching a digital free trade zone with the Malaysian government last November, Alibaba is taking its collaboration one step further.

Alibaba Cloud, the company’s cloud computing unit, today announced a new initiative with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), the capital’s city council. Called ‘Malaysia City Brain,’ the new project is aimed at reducing traffic, monitoring the flow of vehicles, and improving urban planning across the country.

Using Alibaba Cloud’s data mining and video and image recognition technology, Malaysian cities will be able to track traffic volume and speed to automatically detect incidents and optimize the flow of traffic.

This will be the first time Alibaba Cloud’s smart city AI product is deployed outside of China. In Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur will be the first city to roll out City Brain.

Malaysia City Brain can integrate data from telecom operators and ride-hailing apps.

In the first phase of the project, the tech company will work with DBKL to integrate data from more than 500 cameras across 281 intersections in the country capital, and provide real-time analysis to improve traffic efficiency.

The second phase will bring in more data sources, such as GPS and the traffic light control system. “Given [that] the Malaysia City Brain is an open platform, it can integrate data from telecom operators and ride-hailing apps to make the City Brain platform more intelligent,” an Alibaba Cloud spokesperson tells Tech in Asia.

In the future, “the private sector, industry partners, and research institutions” will also be able to access the data and technology on the platform, as well as contribute their own algorithms to make it smarter, she adds.

Similar to its Digital Free Trade Zone in Malaysia, a logistics hub that serves small and medium-sized businesses in Southeast Asia, the City Brain initiative reflects Alibaba’s interest in developing its influence across the region. The Chinese tech giant owns a controlling stake in Southeast Asian ecommerce platform Lazada. Last August, the tech giant also ploughed US$1.1 billion into Indonesian ecommerce site Tokopedia.

“Malaysia is one of the earliest countries that support[ed] Belt and Road Initiatives,” explains Charlie Dai, principal analyst at Forrester, adding that Alibaba has already established strategic relationships with the Malaysian government in many areas, including ecommerce and logistics.

“It’s the natural choice for Alibaba to make Malaysia as its first move to extend its footprint on smart city services into Asia Pacific and globally,” he says. The Malaysia City Brain project could also “significantly help Alibaba build up its reputation and trust in [Asia Pacific] and the global market as a lighthouse, from both technology and political perspectives.”

AI-as-a-service

Alibaba Cloud isn’t the only cloud computing firm targeting city management. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest cloud services provider in the world, has its own suite of products for smart cities. Clients include Singapore’s Land Transport Authority, as well as the New York City Department of Transportation.

Building out more vertical products, such as AI services for cities, retail, and finance, could be a key area of growth for Alibaba Cloud, as it expands overseas and competes with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.