Intel has noted a $200 billion addressable opportunity for the 'data-centric' economy combining cloud, AI and edge – and the latter has come into force following a new partnership with Alibaba.

The collaboration, revealed at Alibaba's Computing Conference in Hangzhou, will see the two companies launch a joint edge computing platform.

The primary use case is for industrial manufacturing and smart buildings, integrating Intel's hardware, software and AI with Alibaba Cloud's IoT products. "The platform utilises computer vision and AI to convert data at the edge into business insights," the companies note.

The companies are partnering in other ways – deploying the latest Intel technology in Alibaba to prepare for the 11/11 shopping festival, as well as helping provide content for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020.

"Alibaba's highly innovative data-centric computing infrastructure supported by Intel technology enables real-time insight for customers from the cloud to the edge," said Navin Shenoy, Intel EVP and data centre group general manager in a statement. "Our close collaboration with Alibaba from silicon to software to market adoption enables customers to benefit from a broad set of workload-optimised solutions."

Last month, Shenoy told attendees at the Data-Centric Innovation Summit in Santa Clara of Intel's plans to address the 'biggest opportunity' in the company's history. In a subsequent company editorial, he further outlined his vision. "The proliferation of the cloud beyond hyperscale and into the network and out to the edge, the impending transition to 5G, and the growth of AI and analytics have driven a profound shift in the market, creating massive amounts of largely untapped data," he wrote.

This is not the only cloudy partnership Alibaba has tapped into in recent weeks – the company also struck a deal with SAP to launch in China, with the two companies jointly offering ERP suite S/4HANA Cloud in the country.