A leading e-commerce player in China, JD.com Inc, has launched a cloud platform as it gears up for competition in the sector, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday.

JD's cloud platform will start offering basic cloud and data cloud services to third-party institutions this month. It will help enterprises with data collection, screening, analysis, model building and transactions, according to JD Vice President He Gang.

The cloud platform will mainly target clients like government institutions and enterprises in traditional sectors, He said.

With the cloud computing industry just getting started, there is a huge development potential for the sector. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's cloud computing market was worth about 7 billion yuan ($1.08 billion) in 2014, up 47.5 percent year-on-year.

The global public cloud market is expected to hit $204 billion this year, up 16.5 percent from 2015, according to research firm Gartner.