Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) Official Launch

Alibaba Group officially launched Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) as its cloud computing arm, initially to support its vast internal e-commerce operations, which included Taobao and Tmall.

Significance

This marked the birth of the foundational platform upon which the VPN Gateway and many other cloud services would eventually be built, establishing Alibaba's ambitious entry into the global cloud market.