SHANGHAI, Jan. 8 (XINHUA) - 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.