China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced Monday the
launch of Alisoft, an on-line business software provider to be
established as a new company serving small and medium sized
enterprises (SMEs) in China.
Alisoft will initially target the 18 million SME users of
Alibaba.com services, said General Manager of Alisoft Oliver
Wang.
Wang said Alisoft has developed a cost effective, simple web
based product that Chinese SMEs will embrace, and the large number
of SME users of Alibaba.com services give Alisoft a great
advantage.
Alisoft's business software services come in three editions:
global trade, domestic China trade and individual trade.
Alisoft will also assume responsibility for the Alibaba Group's
real-time business communications tools. The Group's popular
instant messaging services will be merged into one service, under
the name of "Ali Wang Wang."
During its testing phase Alisoft's web based software services
have attracted more than 500,000 active users and more than three
million registered users. Alisoft will begin to charge a fee for
some of its business software services in the first half on
2007.
(Xinhua News Agency January 9, 2007)