President of Alibaba Cloud China Resigns
On Wednesday, Chinese media outlet Leiphone reported it had learned from various sources that Alibaba Cloud, a cloud computing and artificial intelligence tech firm owned by Alibaba, is undergoing a new round of organizational restructuring. Ren Geng, president of Alibaba Cloud China, has resigned and Huang Haiqing, vice president of Alibaba Cloud, will take over the position.
In March this year, Cai Yinghua, the former president of Huawei Enterprise Business Group (EBG) China, joined Alibaba Cloud and served as senior VP of Alibaba. Ren Geng was in charge of Alibaba Cloud business in China and reported to Cai. Four core business executives including Ren Geng reported to Cai since his joining in March.
It was revealed that Ren intended to leave as early as 2021, but stayed in office for several reasons. The employee’s plans after resignation remain unknown for the time being.
Huang Haiqing, who succeeded Ren, brings much richer experiences to the position. He is a veteran in cloud computing, and worked in Dell, IBM, and Oracle. Huang joined Tencent Cloud in 2016 for business expansion, and then became its VP. He left Tencent Cloud in 2018, and served as CEO of DATATOM. He once planned for a listing on Shanghai’s STAR Market in 2020.
Huang Haiqing highlighted two major priorities at the executive meeting in China on Tuesday: first, a sales focus on high-quality, self-owned products, and second, an emphasis on profits.
In addition, the team of architects at Alibaba Cloud will all be consolidated and integrated, with Huo Jia, general manager of intelligent general industry solutions, heading the team. Huo will report to Cai Yinghua instead of Ren Geng. The restructuring is expected to allow the solutions team to judge business opportunities more independently and be involved in the whole process of the project, altering the original flawed model.
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Several mid- and senior-level executives under Alibaba‘s VP Li Feifei and other top executives have recently resigned. Sources said that this adjustment was just a start. As Cai Yinghua and Huang Haiqing strengthen their internal positions, more executives will join, and this will lead to new rounds of organizational adjustments and business restructuring.
