Globally, a complex migration of the cloud is underway. 

The leading Southeast Asian technology company, GoTo Group, is fully migrating its infrastructure from Western clouds to Chinese clouds. 

On June 6th, GoTo announced that its financial business, GoTo Financial, has migrated from a cloud provider in North America to Alibaba Cloud. In the future, Alibaba Cloud will support GoPay, a national-level payment tool in Indonesia, serving over 20 million local users. The cloud migration was initiated in October 2024. Once the full migration is completed, GoTo will become one of the most important customers of Alibaba Cloud in the Indonesian market. 

It is worth noting that GoTo Group is one of the largest Internet technology companies in Southeast Asia, with business covering local life, including ride-hailing, food delivery, and finance (financial payment, financial services), etc. On April 11, 2022, GoTo was listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. 

GoTo CEO and Senior Executives Visit Alibaba's Xixi Campus

Why did GoTo choose such a complex full cloud migration? How did Chinese cloud service providers break through? 

Recently, journalists from National Business Daily (hereinafter referred to as NBD) conducted an exclusive interview with Patrick Walujo, CEO of GoTo Group, and William Xiong, CTO of GoTo Group, to understand the practical considerations behind this full-scale cloud migration and the key factors for Chinese cloud vendors to break through overseas. 

Patrick Walujo introduced, "The reason for such a thorough cloud migration is, on the one hand, that GoTo's system was built a long time ago and indeed needs to be updated and upgraded to make it more resilient and flexible. On the other hand, it is also based on cost considerations. We hope that after the overall upgrade, it can effectively enhance the operational efficiency of GoTo's business and thereby effectively reduce costs." 

When it comes to choosing a cloud provider, Patrick Walujo was straightforward, "Alibaba is one of the investors of GoTo Group, but that's not the reason why we ultimately chose Alibaba Cloud. After clarifying our cloud migration requirements, we invited almost all the major cloud providers in the world and issued an RFP (Request for Proposal), clearly emphasizing standards such as performance, price, and quality. Our final choice was based on the best service plan provided by the cloud provider." 

William Xiong told reporters that the choice of Alibaba Cloud was made for two reasons: one is its capabilities, and the other is that we hope that through this cloud migration, both sides can achieve better cooperation results in technical collaboration. In the future, we also hope to have very good cooperation at the cloud service level. At the beginning of their cooperation in 2024, GoTo and Alibaba Cloud also announced a five-year strategic partnership: during the five-year cooperation period, Alibaba Cloud will provide GoTo with various cloud-related services, including cloud computing, cloud-native databases, networking, security, and data analysis, etc. 

From a technical perspective, William Xiong believes that Alibaba Cloud is a leading cloud provider with rich computing power and cloud deployment capabilities globally. 

For GoTo, this cloud migration is a very complex process. 

For instance, GoTo has national-level applications such as Gojek and GoPay, covering millions of active users. During the cloud migration process, how to minimize the impact on users while supporting business development? How to smoothly achieve cloud migration for such large-scale applications? These are not small challenges for both GoTo and Alibaba Cloud. 

During the migration process, William Xiong pointed out that the GoTo technology team and Alibaba Cloud have carried out in-depth cooperation in aspects such as big data processing, function adaptation, and the application of new cloud migration tools and platforms. The close collaboration between the two sides has effectively promoted GoTo to complete the migration work of high quality in a relatively short period of time. 

This cloud migration also provides a practical reference for other technology companies to achieve cloud migration in the future. In William Xiong's view, the platform products and service capabilities that were collaborated with Alibaba Cloud this time can be used as a common solution in the future and provided to other enterprises in Indonesia and even the global market. 

Photo/NBD

It is worth noting that a new wave of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology is sweeping the world. With the deepening of digital transformation of global enterprises, the demand for the integration of cloud computing and AI is increasing day by day, and AI also puts forward higher requirements for infrastructure. Cloud is no longer an "auxiliary tool" for enterprises to implement AI, but an indispensable core infrastructure. 

In addition to the existing cloud services, Patrick Walujo also mentioned: "The AI market space in Indonesia is very large. Currently, it is still in the exploration stage as a whole. Indonesian consumers are among the relatively advanced groups in accepting AI technology. Therefore, we are looking forward to becoming a company that seizes this wave of AI." 

Open-source models are very helpful and beneficial to the GoTo Group. Therefore, GoTo has collaborated with some of the more mainstream open-source models. We believe that, considering both cost and performance, Chinese open-source models still have significant advantages, especially in meeting the demands of developing markets. We are also discussing with Alibaba Cloud about potential business scenarios and areas for expansion in AI cooperation, particularly in the context of the Alibaba Qianfan large model. 

"GoTo AI" and "Go China" are the current key strategic directions of the GoTo Group. Recently, the GoTo Group released the Sahabat-AI open-source large model. GoTo hopes to provide Indonesian users with a relatively lightweight, more easily accessible, and more relevant large model for local use, while accelerating the application and development of large models in the local market. 

The Indonesian market is the third-largest AI market globally, and the pace of AI deployment there is very fast. In terms of the volume of consumers, it is also very large. Therefore, on the one hand, we hope to utilize AI to become a business growth engine for the GoTo Group. On the other hand, based on our open-source models, we hope to provide more services to the external market. We look forward to more cooperation with Alibaba Cloud in the area of large models and, on this basis, exploring and applying more solutions. William Xiong shared his vision for future cooperation possibilities with Chinese AI technology with reporters.

The following is the interview transcript: 

NBD: We previously learned that many enterprises have their data already stored with their original cloud service providers, so the possibility of them doing cloud migration is relatively low. What is the driving force behind pushing GoTo to do cloud migration this time? 

Patrick Walujo: From my perspective, the reason for undertaking such a large-scale migration this time is, on the one hand, that our system was built quite a long time ago and needs to be updated and upgraded to make it more resilient and flexible. On the other hand, it is based on cost considerations. After the update and upgrade, we hope it will drive the improvement of our business efficiency and thereby achieve the goal of cost reduction. 

NBD: How significant is this cloud migration? 

William Xiong: It's a comprehensive migration. All the core systems and all the data I mentioned earlier have been migrated. This is a very significant move. In the industry, I believe it's also a very good benchmark. 

NBD: When making the full migration from Western cloud service providers to Chinese ones, how did GoTo make the decision on the selection of cloud service providers? 

Patrick Walujo: Actually, after we clearly defined our cloud migration requirements, we invited all the major cloud vendors and sent out RFPs (Requests for Proposals) to each of them, including both Chinese and American cloud vendors. They competed on an equal footing. We also made it very clear to them that performance, price and quality would be the ultimate criteria for our selection. So, in the end, our choice was based on the best solution offered by the vendor. 

William Xiong: Yes. Under fair conditions, everyone provided solutions, and in the end, we chose the solution from a Chinese cloud service provider. 

NBD: What kind of change does this reflect? 

Patrick Walujo: Although Alibaba is our shareholder, that's not the reason why we ultimately chose them. We still started from which cloud provider could offer the best solution and the strongest service. Eventually, the partner we chose was the one that could provide all the standards we considered important. At the same time, from the perspective of cost-effectiveness, these cloud providers could also meet our cost considerations to a satisfactory degree. 

NBD: GoTo Group previously announced a five-year strategic partnership with Alibaba Cloud. During this cloud migration, Alibaba Cloud is also one of the cooperating cloud service providers. What factors led GoTo to choose Alibaba Cloud as its core partner? 

William Xiong: There are several reasons for reaching this agreement. First, Alibaba Cloud is a leading international cloud provider with extensive computing power and cloud deployment capabilities worldwide. Second, from GoTo's perspective, this is a very complex process. We chose Alibaba Cloud not only because of its capabilities but also because we hope to have more technical cooperation. This cloud migration has brought good results to both sides, such as the improvement of cloud service product capabilities and the promotion of GoTo's multi-cloud migration and multi-cloud strategy. In the future, we hope to have very good cooperation in the cloud service aspect. 

NBD: What technical or operational challenges were encountered during the cloud migration process? How did the teams from GoTo and Alibaba Cloud overcome these challenges? 

William Xiong: From a migration perspective, this GoTo migration is one of the most complex migrations in Southeast Asia and even globally. This cloud migration involves four different data centers in various regions, and we need to move the entire service back to Indonesia. On the other hand, it involves all the core businesses of the GoTo Group, with tens of millions of active users. Therefore, we need to figure out how to do this well and minimize the impact on our customers. At the same time, supporting business development is a major challenge. During the cloud migration process, I think there has been a lot of cooperation with Alibaba Cloud partners, whether it's in big data, functional adaptation, or in some new cloud migration tools and platforms. 

NBD: We have noticed that GoTo has also launched the GoTo AI initiative this year and launched Indonesia's first AI voice assistant. Could you introduce GoTo's overall AI strategy? What is the current level of digitalization in Indonesia? What is the general attitude of local users towards AI technology? 

Patrick Walujo: Earlier, we released the large model Sahabat-AI, which is an open-source large model for the user end. Last year, we also released open-source large models with 8 billion and 9 billion parameters. Regarding GoTo's AI strategy, we aim to offer relatively lightweight, more accessible and highly relevant large models to serve the local market. In light of the local AI deployment and application situation in the Indonesian market, we have also communicated with some of the leading AI vendors in the industry. Indonesia is the world's third-largest AI market, and the pace of AI deployment there is very fast. Therefore, we have launched Sahabat-AI, hoping to serve the local market more quickly and accelerate the use of large models by local developers and the local market. 

NBD：Since the beginning of the year, we have witnessed that compared with the closed-source model of OpenAI, AI technologies like Qwen and DeepSeek have achieved global breakthroughs through open-source ecosystems. On the other hand, the trend of AI applications in industrial and vertical fields has been strengthening, and the demand for public cloud services from enterprises is also expected to continue to rise. In your opinion, what impacts will this have on GoTo's existing business ecosystem? 

Patrick Walujo: Open-source models are very helpful and beneficial to the GoTo Group. Currently, we are collaborating with some of the mainstream international open-source models, such as LLaMA and DeepSeek. We hold great respect for these models and are very happy to work with any model that can help us solve problems and bring business value. 

Considering both cost and performance, we believe that China's open-source models still have significant advantages, especially in meeting the demands of the markets in developing countries. We are also discussing with Alibaba on how we can jointly explore business scenarios and fields in AI cooperation, particularly in the area of Qwen.