A Gartner Inc. report places Alibaba Cloud’s (a subsidiary of Alibaba Group), market position in fourth place, and the share (2.6 percent) does not even come within sniffing distance of Amazon (30.3 percent) and Microsoft Azure (13.8 percent). Even third place Google LLC has more than twice the share at 5.9 percent. Yet, one of Alibaba’s top executives has publicly declared that his company will surpass Amazon in cloud market share within two years. What set of circumstances could lead to such a significant market shift?

The answer may lie in the internet economy and the explosion of “internet of things” devices that are reshaping cloud models to meet data management demands. Alibaba is building its structure to offer intelligent internet of things hybrid cloud solutions, integrated with connected devices and providing real-time data analysis. It’s the complete package at a time when enterprise information technology may soon need it most, and this has major technology players, such as Intel, taking notice.

“Most cloud companies are probably not as far along as them. Our view is that the world is hybrid, which is why we are big supporters of Alibaba and the hybrid cloud movement,” said Dhiraj Mallick (pictured, right), vice president of innovation and architecture, data center, at Intel.

Mallick stopped by theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with host John Furrier (@furrier, pictured, left) at The Computing Conference in Hangzhou, China. They discussed the impact of 5G deployment on Alibaba’s cloud model and the future role of quantum computing. (* Disclosure below.)

Deployment of 5G will be key

An important factor in Alibaba’s cloud success may be the deployment of 5G technology, which will form the critical connectivity layer in the network. China Unicom recently announced a stock transfer agreement to help speed 5G deployment for Alibaba, Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

“5G forms the connectivity fabric between the data center and the edge,” Mallick explained. “It allows data to be pre-positioned at the correct places in the network so that you minimize latencies through the network and do analytics on it as quickly as you possibly can.”

The Chinese giant’s cloud strategy may also depend on a serious boost in computational capacity, which is driving current research in quantum computing. Earlier this month, Alibaba announced $15 billion in funding for a new research group that will be focused on emerging technologies, such as quantum computing, an area that Intel has invested in as well.

“We’ve been collaborators with Alibaba for over 10 years, and we view them as a very strategic partner,” Mallick said. “I think the technologies that they’re investing in are very, very impressive.”

Here’s the complete video interview, and there’s more SiliconANGLE and theCUBE coverage of The Computing Conference. (* Disclosure: Coverage of the Alibaba Cloud Computing Conference is sponsored by Intel. All content is controlled by SiliconANGLE, and neither Intel nor Alibaba have editorial influence on the coverage.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE