The team behind web-based productivity suite Zoho is in the middle of hosting their Zoholics user conference in San Francisco, and in between all the panels and presentations, they’ve taken the opportunity to talk a bit about their plans in the mobile space.
“Mobile is going to be one of the most important focus areas for the company this year,” said Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna. Their approach, it would seem, is to further expand their presence in the mobile space, and they’ve already begun by pulling back the curtains on a handful of new mobile apps. → Read More
Web-based productivity suite Zoho is revamping its CRM offering today. Zoho CRM is one of the company’s most popular application with 25,000 customers.
The most distinct differences between the new version and previous iteration is the UI. Zoho says that based on how customers were interacting with the app, workflow and screens were redesigned to streamline user interactions. → Read More
Zoho is launching five apps on the Google Apps Marketplace, making the productivity suite developer the largest software provider on the marketplace with 11 apps. While some vendors (i.e. Netkiller) also provide a similar number of features to Google Apps customers, Zoho is the largest software developer on the marketplace measured by number of apps.
Zoho’s new applications include Zoho Creator, Zoho Discussions, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Reports and Zoho Wiki. Currently, Zoho has tens of thousands of customers using Zoho applications in the Google Apps Marketplace, which launched a little over a year ago. → Read More
As we wrote last week, Zoho was prepping the launch of an online accounting software called Zoho Books. Today, the productivity suite empire is launching Zoho Books to the public.
Zoho’s 26th productivity app, Zoho Books, is an online accounting software that gives business as snapshot of money flowing into and out of accounts. The software allows you to send invoices for payments, receive online payments, record bills and expenses, monitor bank and credit card transactions, deal in a variety of currencies, manage contacts, and share data. → Read More
It appears that Zoho is expanding its productivity suite empire once again with the launch of Zoho Books, an online accounting software. We were alerted to the new product by a reader, who managed to find the company’s 26th product (though it appears that Zoho has taken the site down). We’ve posted screenshots below.
Similar to Quickbooks, Zoho Books is an online accounting software that gives business as snapshot of money flowing into and out of accounts. According to the site, the software allows you to send invoices for payments, receive online payments, record bills and expenses, monitor bank and credit card transactions, deal in a variety of currencies, manage contacts, and share data. → Read More
Zoho is an impressive company all around—the startup’s web-based productivity competes directly with Microsoft and Google, but has never taken any outside funding. And Zoho now has 25 different productivity apps, with 3.5 million users actively using Zoho’s apps daily. Today, we can add one more to the mix with the launch of Zoho Support, a web-based help desk software.
Zoho Support aims to help businesses manage and respond to customer support inquiries logged via the phone, email or through a website. Similar to Zendesk, Zoho Support allows IT staff and technicians to prioritize customer tickets, find the appropriate response and get back to the customer as soon as possible. → Read More
Six months ago, Google launched its very own app store for enterprise apps, the Google Apps Marketplace, at the search giant’s Campfire One event. The idea behind the marketplace was fairly simple—using a set of APIs, third-party apps could deeply integrate their products within Google Apps and offer these free or paid apps to the productivity suite’s users. At launch, Google partnered with 50 startups and companies to provide these apps, including Zoho, Socialwok, Aviary, and more.
Since March, Google has been steadily adding additional apps to the store, including Bantam Live and Bill.com, and now counts more than 200 installable apps available in the Marketplace. Google says that there are 4 million Google Apps users (out of over 25 million users) with Marketplace apps installed on their domain. The Marketplace itself is a big venture for Google; not only is it a way to provide more functionality for Apps (and draw more users) but it’s also a monetization channel (Google takes a 20 percent cut of each sale). Google has been actively trying to get more developers to add their apps to the platform, even posting glowing testimonials from developers who offer apps on the marketplace. To see how representative these testimonials are, we decided to speak with a number of developers to see how their apps are actually performing on the Marketplace. → Read More
An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives?
The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers. And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate—with no skills—for around $60,000? Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”. As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters. → Read More
You can definitely call me an Apple fanboy: I’ve bought practically every device that Steve Jobs has made since 1985—when I got my first Macintosh. I own an Apple TV, several iPods, a Macbook Pro, a Macbook Air, an iMac, two iPhones, and two iPads (one was a gift). For various reasons, I need to use Microsoft Outlook and Windows, so I run these in a virtual machine on my Mac. But this fanboy is listing his iPads for sale on Craigslist. Why? Because they’ve become like the paperweights on his desk. I just don’t use them.
When the iPad was first announced, I predicted that it would be a game changer. I touted, to my Twitter followers, that grandma would soon be able to tell her cable company to take back its cable modem. She would no longer have to deal with the complexities of configuring Wi-Fi connections on her router. All she would need in order to surf the web and check email is the $15/month AT&T 3G service. Junior would soon be able to traverse new virtual worlds and learn world history while playing games on this slick new device. I also expected that I wouldn’t need to carry around my bulky laptop; instead I would have a device that provided almost the same features as my laptop, but had the elegance and simplicity of an iPhone. I really believed that this cool new device would solve the world’s technology problems and reduce the number of electronic gadgets I had to carry around. → Read More
Zoho’s project collaboration product and Basecamp-rival, Zoho Projects, is getting a much needed feature today: a Bug Tracking tool. Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big software projects with external customers.
Tracking software bugs and then prioritizing these bugs and fixing the issues are an integral part of the day-to-day workflow of any software project. Zoho Projects’ new Bug Tracking module allows teams to submit, track and fix software bugs. → Read More
Zoho’s suite of productivity apps is undoubtedly comprehensive, with over 20 different products available to users. Apps include Zoho Mail, CRM, Projects, Planner, Meeting, and more. But a calendering app is an important layer that can sit on top of and unify all these applications. Zoho Calendar, which was launched into beta last year, is exiting beta today with a host of new features and functionality.
One of the primary additions to Zoho Calendar is the ability to now privately share your calendars with other users with a Zoho account. You can share your calendar in a read-only mode so that users can view only Free/Busy times or all of your events and meetings. Read-write mode allows other users to edit your existing events or event create and edit events on your calendar. Similar to Google Calendar, you share your calendar with other users by adding their email address to the account and then setting preferences. → Read More
Zohi Wiki, which originally launched in 2006, is getting an upgrade today, with additional collaboration features, access controls and more.
Zoho has added workspaces within Wiki to allow teams to have their own groups within organization wikis. Each workspace has its own administrative and customization options and can serve as a separate portal. Zoho has also added more in-depth access controls to wikis, which allows administrators to set permissions for Workspaces, multiple groups, individuals, domains, public, and for users within an organization. Admins can also assign separate permissions for edit, view, create and delete functions. → Read More
Web-based productivity suite Zoho is getting into the search game today. The startup is adding an “actionable” search tool to its productivity suite, allowing a user to do a keyword search across an organization’s entire suite, across multiple applications including email, documents, forums, contacts, and more.
The search portal acts much like any search engine within a content site. Users can search by keyword or contact, and view results from multiple apps. Zoho Search indexes data from multiple Zoho Apps, including Zoho Mail, Docs, Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, Discussions, Accounts and more. Search results are grouped based on applications and filters are provided to view additional results from each category. From within search, users can reply to emails, edit documents, comment on forums, or update contact information. → Read More
Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a “fake Office” by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Here are our notes from the announcement. Zoho will be integrating two of its over 20 business applications – Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps.
So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App’s extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation. main will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation. → Read More
Online productivity suite Zoho has been open to allowing users to use their Google, Google Apps and Yahoo accounts to log-in to Zoho Apps. Zoho says that most of its users are using their log-ins for other applications to use Zoho’s offerings. Today, the productivity suite is adding a social layer to its suite by integrating the ability to login with Facebook Connect.
Similar to its integration with Google apps, Zoho users can login to Zoho using their Facebook credentials. Users with existing Zoho accounts can now link the two accounts so that they can login with Facebook credentials alone. But the plus of using Facebook Connect now allows Zoho to transcend platforms. So you can now share documents with Facebook users who don’t have a Zoho Account. Of course this isn’t Zoho’s first foray into Facebook’s territory. Zoho’s Facebook app allows users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from within Facebook and includes the ability to view and edit all existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations (both personal and shared) from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show. → Read More
In 2008, productivity suite empire Zoho launched a simple invoicing tool, unsurprisingly called Zoho Invoice. Today, the startup is releasing a new version of its Invoice, dubbed Invoice 2.0, that has a fresh user interface and provides a more open application.
The fact is that over the past two years, there have been a plethora of online invoicing startups that have popped up and Zoho is catching up to its competitors with version two of its offering. With this update, Zoho has redesigned its UI making it easier to navigate and customize to fit the look and feel of a business’ design. Zoho Invoice will also allow users to record separate expenses they incur while serving particular clients (like travel, material etc). → Read More
Zoho Reports, the web-based productivity suite’s business and data intelligence tool, is ripping off the beta tag and officially launching today with a new pricing model and set of features. Zoho Reports, which was formerly known as Zoho DB, provides developers and database administrators with better ways to manage, digest and understand their data. It’s similar in theory to Microsoft Access but that the application is online.
Zoho Reports can upload data from a variety of sources including Excel and HTML files. And Zoho Reports works with hosted and behind-the-firewall business applications and databases from Oracle, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and MS Access databases. Users can interact with Reports via a drag and drop interface, with the application featuring in-depth collaborative tools that let users develop reports together and share reports with each other. Zoho also promises security of all reports. → Read More
Zoho is undoubtedly the lesser known name and an underdog in the productivity suite race with Google and Microsoft. But the startup has a compelling strategy: Zoho continuously launches integrations with its competitors and also iterates on it product to offer new and innovative products. Previously, Zoho has launched various integrations with Google sign-ins and with Google Apps. Today, Zoho is launching a full integration between Google Docs and Zoho’s Apps.
Google Docs users can now attach files from Google Docs to Zoho’s CRM within Leads, Accounts, and Cases of Zoho CRM. When users try to attach a document from Google Docs, they will be prompted to authenticate using Google credentials. Google Docs will be listed within Zoho once users sign-in. → Read More
Web-based productivity suite Zoho is launching a new product today, Zoho Recruit. A niche product, Zoho Recruit, is an application designed to help HR Departments and staffing agencies management recruitment.
Zoho Recruit, which is an offshoot of Zoho People’s recruitment technology, is an Applicant Tracking System that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track job openings, resumes, candidates and contacts. The application will source candidates by gathering resumes from multiple sources on the web and includes a technology that will weed out the candidates. → Read More
Web-based productivity suite Zoho has continued to integrate its products with Google in order to make it easier to use Gmail and Zoho apps simultaneously. Last summer, Zoho, a web-based software suite that includes document, project and invoicing management tools, integrated Google and Yahoo sign-ins, allowing users to sign into Zoho using a Google or Yahoo account. And over the summer, Zoho is launched sign-in integration with Google Apps, letting users login to Zoho using their Google Apps credentials. Today, Zoho’s project collaboration product, Zoho Projects, will become an extended application to Google Apps.
Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big projects with external customers. With the new integration, Google Apps users can login to Zoho Projects using their Google Apps sign-in info. Users can then upload their documents from Google Docs to Zoho Projects directly. Any tasks, meetings or activities in Zoho Project will automatically bee updated in Google Calendar. And Zoho Projects gadgets can be embedded within Gmail, iGoogle and any other OpenSocial compatible sites. → Read More
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