[photopress:alisoft_logo.jpg,full,alignright]Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, is to introduce, through it newly set up division Alisoft, a Web-based corporate management service that allows companies to access their business data anywhere there’s an Internet connection. The service is based on a model called ‘software as a service,’ or SAAS. SAAS allows users to store their data on the software provider’s server and access it through the Internet, rather than running the management software on their own computers.
In other words, users pay for using rather than owning the software, while the provider is in charge of its availability and maintenance. This service is at the moment available for free from Google but the utility of the programs is perhaps not wide enough for business use.
There is now a Premium Edition package, free until the end of this month, targeting customers from small businesses to family users. Interesting to see how it works out. It is no competition for Alibaba. It does not understand Chinese.
Liu Yunfei, a spokesman for Alisoft, said, ‘We are quite optimistic about the new service . . . the only thing we need to do is to get the companies understand its benefits.’
Alisoft expects sales of its SAAS to reach at least RMB100 million ($12.94 million) this year, after spending more than RMB50 million in setting up the network and servers that are in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based, as well as Hong Kong and the United States.
It is targetting the 15 million small and medium-sized Chinese enterprises and three million overseas users that do international trading on Alibaba.
Source: China Daily