Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is partnering with international technology firms such as SAP to help them enter the Chinese market, a region that foreign companies often struggle to compete in.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the New York-listed company, will allow foreign firms to bring their software products into China using Alibaba's infrastructure.

The 11 technology firms are from the United States, Europe, Japan and Thailand and include the likes of SAP and HERE, the mapping system owned by a conglomerate of German carmakers including Daimler.

"Selling into China is not easy. First you would need infrastructure help from someone like Alibaba Cloud where we have the best data centers and network. Secondly, you would have to work with local regulation issues because unlike other countries, China requires cloud operators to hold certain licenses around data regulation. That is where we can help. We help them comply with local regulation," Sicheng Yu, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Global, told CNBC by phone.