(Yicai) Dec. 14 -- The chief commercial officer of Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing arm has resigned after less than two years at the Chinese e-commerce giant in the latest in a series of senior management shake-ups at the company and on the heels of an aborted spin-off, online tech news outlet 36Kr reported.

Cai Yinghua was responsible for Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group’s government and business affairs and was given the task of rapidly improving AliCloud’s revenue, 36Kr reported yesterday. He joined Alibaba as senior vice president in March last year from telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies where he was president of the enterprise business group.

But it has not been an easy few months. AliCloud's chief executive officer and chairman, Daniel Zhang, resigned in September, and the reins were handed over to Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu. Zhang also stepped down as Alibaba's chairman and CEO at the same time.

Then just last month Hangzhou-based Alibaba said it was halting the planned spin-off and listing of its cloud computing business due to the uncertainties brought about by US chip export restrictions.

As competition in the cloud computing market intensifies, firms have shifted their focus from revenue growth to cost reduction and guaranteeing profit, the report said.

In the three months ended Sept. 30, AliCloud’s pre-tax profit surged more than three-and-a-half fold from the previous quarter to CNY1.4 billion (USD196.2 million) thanks to the slashing of some orders, according to its latest earnings report. Revenue climbed 2 percent year on year to CNY27.6 billion (USD3.9 billion).

Editor: Kim Taylor