ALIBABA.COM Corp, China's largest e-commerce company, will offer a six-month free trial of its business management software in a move to boost its number of users to over a million from 400,000 now before it ends.
The company will target especially small and medium-size firms trading on its business-to-business site, it said yesterday.
Its software division, Alisoft in which Alibaba has invested more than 100 million yuan (US$13 million), is confident that the software business launched in January would still be profitable this year despite the six-month free tryout.
"We already have some paid users and expect many new users to pay after the trial before the year's end," Liu Fei, an official with Alisoft's marketing department, said yesterday.
The free trial is for its international trading management software, the only one that charges a fee among Alisoft's portfolio now. The trial offers the same functions as the paid version.
The trade management software, based on the so-called SAAS (software as a service) model, allows users to log onto Alisoft's server with an assigned user account and password. The software helps users in their personnel, finance and storage management.
The on-demand service, already used by SAP AG and Oracle Corp as well as Google in its online Apps Premium Edition package, saves companies money from developing a software infrastructure. Users pay a monthly fee for access to software over the Internet.
Alibaba officials refused to disclose the software price, but it should be "much less expensive than (similar) products sold by SAP and Oracle", Wang Tao, head of Alisoft, said at the firm's opening ceremony in January.
Alisoft is also now helping Microsoft distribute business management software like e-commerce service platform, office and communication system to Alibaba's nearly 20 million customers under a partnership sealed in April.
Alibaba, based in Hangzhou, eastern Zhejiang Province, and 40 percent owned by Yahoo Inc, plans to list its B2B site in Hong Kong this year to raise US$800 million, according to earlier media reports.