Alibaba opens first U.S. cloud centre, enters hotly contested market

By John Ruwitch and Paul Carsten HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is launching a cloud computing hub in Silicon Valley on Wednesday, the e-commerce giant's first outside of China, underscoring its global ambitions in the face of stiff and entrenched competition. The new California data centre marks the Chinese company's latest measured expansion onto American soil, and into a hotly contested U.S. market now dominated by Amazon.com Inc , Microsoft Corp and Google In