Microsoft China Veteran Poached by JD.com in Cloud-Services Coup
September 12 2017 - 7:36AM
Dow Jones News
By Liza Lin
SHANGHAI--In a blow to Microsoft Corp., a top cloud-computing
executive in China has been hired by JD.com Inc., the e-commerce
company that is ramping up its cloud-services business.
Samuel Shen, a Microsoft veteran of 24 years and the former
general manager of its cloud and enterprise business in China, took
the job as JD's president of its cloud unit, Beijing-based JD said
in a statement Tuesday.
Cloud platforms, which provide data storage, computing and
networking resources over the internet, reduce the need for on-site
servers. Foreign companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc.
provide services in China through joint ventures with local
partners.
U.S. lawmakers have spoken out against draft rules, proposed by
Beijing late last year, requiring companies to essentially transfer
ownership and operations of their cloud services to Chinese
partners.
China's market for cloud infrastructure as a service rose 68% to
$1.47 billion in 2016, according to industry researcher
International Data Corp.
The cloud unit of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is China's biggest
provider of these services with about 40% market share. Microsoft
has about 5%, and JD's market share was too small to be ranked in a
recent IDC survey.
Mr. Shen has led Microsoft's China cloud service, known as
Azure, since 2015. He was also chief operating officer at
Microsoft's Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group, where he
helmed Microsoft's development strategy in big data and the
Internet of Things.
Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a WSJ conference in Hong Kong this June, Microsoft's Greater
China chairman Alain Crozier said its cloud business had been
experiencing "very nice and very solid growth."
Write to Liza Lin at Liza.Lin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 12, 2017 07:21 ET (11:21 GMT)
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