Alibaba Group Tuesday launched a cloud service platform to provide e-commerce and consumer management services to external vendors.

The new platform, combining the data service of Tmall, Ali Cloud, and China Civilink, a smaller data and software service provider that Alibaba acquired last year, will help online sellers boost efficiency.

Online vendors on Tmall and Taobao Market Place will be able to use Alibaba's services such as inventory management and supply chain optimization, as well as cross-platform data management support.

The open service platform will also offer extra server capacity during large-scale sales campaigns to ensure orders are taken more efficiently.

Alibaba's cloud service will also provide data back up to vendors on Tmall and Taobao so they won't have to invest in infrastructure.

"There is strong demand from vendors who want to know their customers behavior on Taobao better," said Wang Wenbin, vice president of Tmall. "Statistics such as the number of average daily clicks and how to serve these vendors with our large amount of data is a key strategy for Alibaba."

Alibaba said it attracted more than 20,000 vendors to test the platform during a two-month trial operation in May.

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