Alisoft, the software subsidiary of the Chinese B2B e-commerce giant Alibaba, has announced that the company will initially invest over CNY100 million to set up a cloud computing center in Nanjing, Jiangsu and to invest more in the next few years to promote the e-commerce applications development of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises.

Alisoft defines its cloud computing model as "business cloud". Wang Tao, general manager for Alisoft, told local media that the company plans to establish no less than five business cloud computing centers to work together with its data center in the Hangzhou headquarters to form an advanced business cloud system that can equal the server cluster owned by Internet search engine Google.

Wang says unlike other cloud computing services which only offer computing, memory and network services, Alisoft's business cloud computing centers will also provide various e-commerce services that are suitable for Chinese domestic users, which will not be provided by other cloud computing service providers like IBM, Google or Microsoft.