Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced plans to open a fifth data center in Shenzhen to host its cloud computing platform AliCloud according to Reuters.

AliCloud's new data center will serve "large and small companies, financial institutions and other third parties in southern China," Alibaba said in a statement.

Most recently Alibaba partnered with ICT service provider Donghua Software in a three-year agreement to work on projects covering cloud, big data and a smart city.

AliCloud recently opened its fourth data center in Hong Kong and maintains three other facilities in mainland China including its Beijing facility in May.

AliCloud was initially launched in 2009 as part of Alibaba Group's in-house technical infrastructure but has since then expanded operations to include leasing of processing and storage space for small and medium internet businesses in China.

In May Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma confirmed the company was preparing for its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) where it expects to raise US$1bn.

Alibaba has not yet announced the price of shares in the IPO.

However analysts have estimated the company may be worth US$187bn after the share sale.