Alibaba.com Corp, China's largest e-commerce company, has become the first in the nation to introduce a Web-based corporate management service that allows companies to access their business data anywhere there's an Internet connection.

The service, based on a model called "software as a service," or SAAS, is also something that Microsoft is working on to launch in China after setting up a joint lab last year to tap into the country's growing needs for more efficient corporate management software.

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 infrastructure.

In other words, users pay for using rather than owning the software, while the provider is in charge of its availability and maintenance.

"We are quite optimistic about the new service ... the only thing we need to do is to get the companies understand its benefits," said Liu Yunfei, a spokesman for Alisoft, Alibaba's new division set up in January.

SAP AG, the world's largest maker of business-management software, and its rival Oracle Corp as well as Microsoft Corp are competing in on-demand services that charge a monthly fee per user for access to software over the Internet.

Google Inc, the world No. 1 search engine, has also launched its SAAS-based Apps Premium Edition package, free until the end of this month, targeting customers from small businesses to family users.

Liu said they have six orders as of yesterday, the first day of its launch, but refused to disclose the charge for the service, only saying it should be much cheaper than other software with similar functions.

Alisoft expects sales of its SAAS to reach at least 100 million yuan (12.94 million U.S. dollars) this year, after spending more than 50 million yuan in setting up the network and servers that are in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based, as well as Hong Kong and the United States.

Its current product - also the first commercial software of Alisoft - targets the 15 million small and medium-sized Chinese enterprises and three million overseas users that do international trading on Alibaba, to assist their personnel, finance and storage management.