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.

Despite being the most widely-used smartphone OS in the country, Android hasn’t historically received much Zoho love. To date, there has been only one Zoho app in the Google Play Store, but Zoho has just bolstered their Android lineup with two new additions — Zoho Docs and Zoho CRM. The Zoho Docs app allows users to upload and share (but not edit) documents with coworkers and team members, while Zoho CRM provides users read/write access to their full vault of customer information, accounts, leads, and more.

Zoho also comes bearing good news for users of their online project management service, as they’ve unveiled a new Projects app. Previously, users on-the-go had to rely on the company’s mobile website, but users can now use the native app to create/manage tasks, monitor time spent, and jot down/record notes to keep all team members on the same page.

Zoho CRM is already live in the Google Play Store with Zoho Docs to join it any time now, but the iOS Projects app is still in submission limbo pending Apple’s approval. The apps themselves can all be had for the low, low price of free… though there’s a bit of a catch involved. See, the apps themselves don’t cost anything, but they can only be used with a $3/month mobile subscription.

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.

Via a new Pulse module in the app, you can now follow a particular deal, contact or account in Zoho CRM. All activity related to what you are following will be shown in a stream of updated within the CRM application. Users can also filter activity based on who made the changes and where the changes are made.

Zoho is also debuting a new LinkedIn integration, which allows users to pull information from LinkedIn about a contact, including position, company, city and more. Users can also send direct LinkedIn messages to a contact without leaving the CRM application.

Additionally, users can now use Zoho Creator to build custom apps that appear inside the CRM application and accesses data from the CRM system.

While Zoho is still behind giants like Google and Microsoft in the productivity apps space, the bootstrapped company is still 5 million users strong, and includes nearly 30 apps in its suite of offerings.

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.

The startup’s strong presence on the Google Apps marketplace is interesting considering that Google Apps is actually a competitor to Zoho’s web-based productivity suite. As we reported last Fall, company was seeing less than 500 installs total of its apps per week (at the time Zoho has four apps on the marketplace). Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna tells us that number has gone up to nearly 1000 app installs per week with the addition of new apps.

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.

Users can generate custom estimates, quotes and invoices in multiple currencies-complete with company logos and other customizations. Users can also receive payments online, automate recurring invoices and other repetitive tasks, and send out payment reminders.

The software, which costs $24 per month, also allows business owners to track bank and credit card transactions such as deposits, fund transfers, credit card charges, refunds and expenses. Zoho Books is also launching with a designated app in the Google Apps Marketplace, which is free.

Of course, Zoho will face competition from the popular accounting software from Intuit, Quickbooks. But Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna says that Zoho Books has deep integration with the company’s twenty-something productivity suite apps (i.e. you can import contacts from Zoho CRM), which gives users a comprehensive experience across many different business applications.

For a company that competes with Microsoft ad Google and has never raised any outside funding, the startup is steadily growing, and now has 4 million users and is adding 150,000 new users per month.

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.

Zoho recently added Zoho Support, a web-based help desk software, to its productivity suite empire. The company has an impressive collection of applications considering that it competes with Microsoft ad Google and has never raised any outside funding.

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.

The requests tab helps technicians prioritize the support requests that are coming in from customers, allowing staff to assign different tasks, mark tasks as completed or not completed, and create an order of tasks to complete. The requests module also helps organizations triage these support requests so they can be quickly routed to the appropriate team.

An accounts and contacts module allows organizations to define, track and enforce specific service level agreements they may have agreed to with their customers. For example, two support requests that appear to be similar could have a different priority depending on the agreement hat was promised to each individual customer.

Via a dashboard and reports tab, Zoho Support will show organizations what products are getting the most requests, which problems are taking place most often, who has the slowest response time and more. The task module gives reps the ability track and schedule activities, from getting back to a customer or internal research on an issue.

One useful feature of Zoho Support is the ability to create a solutions data base, which is a wiki-like destination where reps can create and publish solutions to customer support problems. The database is searchable as well.

The advantage of using any of Zoho’s apps, is that it integrated with its other apps seamlessly. Zoho Support is integrated with Zoho CRM and Zoho Chat. Zoho Support, which is available through a freemium model, offers a free plan, and other plans starting at $12 per month per agent (based on the number of tickets created per day.

Zoho’s evangelist Raju Vegesna tells me that the company will also plan to create a Google App in the Apps Marketplace for Zoho Support. The startup already offers a number of apps in the marketplace, including Zoho CRM and Invoice.

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.

Socialwok, a collaboration product that adds a social layer to Google products and Microsoft Outlook, launched as a pilot partner for the Google Apps marketplace in March. Socialwok’s founder Ming Yong says that the startup was able to sign up 4,000 businesses in the two weeks following the launch of their app. After this huge spike, says Yong, downloads of the app went down by half. Socialwok, which is the third top rated app in the store, is now seeing 600 to 800 businesses adding the app per week.

Yong pointed out that via the App Marketplace, the startup was able to sign a big deal with a hotel chain to use Socialwok as a separate application across its business (not just within Google Apps). Apparently, the company saw Socialwok on the App Marketplace and became interested in using the full platform.

But one drawback, says Ming, is the vast amount of noise on the Marketplace and that it can be difficult for users to separate the wheat from the chafe. “There are some developers who just want to have a little Google dust on their brands and have zero-integration with Google’s actual product,” he explains. “There seems to be a more the merrier attitude when it comes to accepting apps in the Marketplace; Google needs to do a better job with regard to discriminating which apps are integrated.”

Currently, Google lists the top five rated apps, the top five downloaded apps, suggestions of popular and notable apps, and a few featured apps on the front page of the Marketplace. You can also search for apps generally by functionality (i.e. accounting, workflow) or by name.

Productivity suite Zoho (which actually competes against Google on a number of products) launched two apps, CRM (which is the fifth top installed app on the marketplace) and Projects, in March and added two other apps, Invoice and Helpdesk, a few months later. Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna tells me that shortly following the launch of the Marketplace, Zoho saw a few hundred downloads a day, but growth leveled off within a month, and now the company sees less than 500 installs total of its apps per week.

One feature that is missing from the Marketplace, says Vegesna, is the ability to test out apps before installing them (Vegesna didn’t know the exact uninstall rate but we heard from one developer who preferred to remain anonymous that the uninstall rate of Apps on the Marketplace is around 20 percent). Vegesna agreed with Yong that there is a lot of noise on the marketplace but said that it’s not nearly as tough to differentiate as it is on Apple’s App Store.

Aviary, which offers a suite of design tools within an App on the Marketplace, also launched as a pilot partner in March and has risen to the second most installed app on the platform. Aviary founder Avi Muchnick declined to give us specific numbers but said right after launch there was a huge insurgence of traffic, but downloads have since dropped to a steady pace.

Aviary is not seeing a large amount of web referrals to its site from the marketplace. But one of the major benefits of being on the App marketplace, rather than downloads, he says, is brand awareness of being associated with Google. Echoing Yong and Vesegna’s criticisms, Muchnik adds that the app marketplace is not ideal for users to discover applications

It’s important to note that Aviary, Socialwok and Zoho all debuted their apps at the launch of the Marketplace, when buzz and downloads were high. I bet that apps that launched a few months after March aren’t seeing nearly as much traffic as these apps did in March. Bantam Live’s CEO John Rourke, who launched his CRM app in the Marketplace in June, said he’s pleased with the performance of his app (he declined to give us numbers). Google says that CRM is a top search term for the Marketplace, so it seems that those types of apps are seeing success on the Marketplace (Bantam Live is currently a featured app).

Even looking from the testimonials Google has published, as a whole developers seem to be pleased with the traffic post launch. For example, productivity and task management app Manymoon claims that it is adding 1,000 new sign-ups per week. And it is the top installed app on the marketplace so that should probably give developers a benchmark of how the most popular app in the marketplace is faring.

Of course, Manymoon is also free, which probably makes it more appealing than some of its paid competitors. In fact, all the top five installed apps are completely free for users except for Zoho, which is free for only three users.

One well-known technology company (which asked to be anonymous), which launched its app on in conjunction with the roll out of the marketplace in March, said that while the number of apps being downloaded is lower than they initially expected. But the app has been able to draw a wide variety of customers, including educational institutions and local and state governments.

The complaint this particular company had was around the marketing of the service to the millions of Google Apps domain administrators. According to the startup, Google seems to be marketing the platform mainly to new companies that join Google Apps. Another way the service could improve, says this company, is to provide a way for Apps administrators to notify users that a new App has been deployed.

As a company spokesperson says, “We understand that Google wants to be sure to protect businesses from having their employees heavily marketed to, and that’s the dilemma of a marketplace like this – it’s massive, but you have to exercise restraint in how you market to it. There’s no easy answer, but anything that helps apps raise awareness among end users in a tactful, responsible way, would be very helpful.”

Another issue that I heard from a number of developers was how Google will integrate its other marketplaces (Android, Chrome) into the App Store. Many of the developers who offer apps in the Marketplace also have Chrome plug-ins and Android apps. Socialwok’s Yong pointed out that it would be helpful to be able to cross-promote apps from each Marketplace.

One developer I spoke to was concerned over the upcoming change in the payment structure for App developers. Currently, users who download apps pay the developers directly. He says that by the end of the year Google plans to take over the payments process and will collect all the payments from users and will distribute payments to developers accordingly. He says that not only will this new payments integration will involve an adjustment of his product but he hopes that Google will offer a payment system that can be integrated in the same way for the Chrome web store and the Android Marketplace (he thinks that each integration will have to be separate and won’t be unified).

As you can see from these anecdotes, developers and startups seem generally happy with their app’s performance on the Marketplace. But clearly Google has some improvements to make, particularly in the area of filtering out apps, marketing and app discovery. Another observation—if all of the most popular apps are free, I am left wondering how many of the 4 million users who use apps are actually paying for their apps.

It seems more likely that for now, the Google Apps Marketplace is good exposure for business apps, as Muchnick says. It can only help to be associated with Google Apps, a product that Google has very high hopes for as a viable cloud-based alternative to Microsoft Office.

Photo credit/IMDB

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.

At least, that’s how the thinking goes in the tech industry.

In their book Chips and Change, Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection). It’s not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

For tech startups, it usually boils down to cost: most can’t even afford to pay $60K salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers. Companies like Zoho can afford to pay market salaries, but can’t find the experienced workers they need. In 2006, Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu, initiated an experiment to hire 17-year-olds directly out of high school. He found that within two years, the work performance of these recruits was indistinguishable from that of their college-educated peers. Some ended up becoming superstar software developers.

Companies such as Microsoft say that they try to maintain a balance but that it isn’t easy. An old friend, David Vaskevitch, who was Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, told me in 2008 that he believes that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But there is a lot they don’t know and can’t know until they gain experience. So Microsoft aggressively recruits for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry, one not at the expense of the other. David acknowledged that the vast majority of new Microsoft employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with. It was all about hiring the best and brightest, he said; age and nationality are not important.

So whether we like it or not, it’s a tough industry. I know that some techies will take offense at what I have to say, but here is my advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey:

1. Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; or jump ship and become an entrepreneur (old guys have a huge advantage in the startup world). Build skills that are more valuable to your company, and take positions that can’t be filled by entry-level workers.
2. If you’re going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you. Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren’t willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns. Save as much as you can when you’re in your 30s and 40s and be prepared to earn less as you gain experience.
3. Keep your skills current. This means keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change. To be writing code for a living when you’re 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block.

My advice to managers is to consider the value of the experience that the techies bring. With age frequently come wisdom and abilities to follow direction, mentor, and lead. Older workers also tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age. During my tech days, I hired several programmers who were over 50. They were the steadiest performers and stayed with me through the most difficult times.

Finally, I don’t know of any university, including the ones I teach at, that tells its engineering students what to expect in the long term or how to manage their technical careers. Perhaps it is time to let students know what lies ahead.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa  is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwaand find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

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.

I still think that Grandma and Junior should keep theirs, but it just doesn’t do its magic for me any longer. Here’s why:

First, I can’t easily load my Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents on the iPad or access the year or more of e-mails that I carry around on my 32 GB USB drive.  The iPad has no USB port, and its means of transferring documents—through iTunes—is pathetic.  Apple’s cloud strategy seems to be centered on iTunes. This is fine for buying movies and music, but not good for document management and retrieval. Yes, there are apps that provide a drop-box service. But I have thousands of research papers and other documents that I need to be able to search and retrieve; a drop box doesn’t provide what I need.

Second, Apple’s Microsoft Office-like products on the iPad are just cheap imitations. Apple’s Pages is a decent word processor, and Numbers is okay as a spreadsheet manager, but these don’t hold a candle to Microsoft Word and Excel. Moreover, I can’t use the excellent cloud-based word processing tools that Zoho offers, or the decent tools in Google docs. The iPad doesn’t recognize the rich-text format that these applications use, so it doesn’t display a keyboard when you try to type.

Third, I usually need to view different applications in multiple screens when I am writing. I want to have my web browser appear in a split screen next to my text editor, and I want to be able to jump between applications—just as I do on my Mac and in Windows. The multi-tasking in iOS 4 allows me to listen to music as I work, but doesn’t do much more for me.

Fourth, on many of the websites I visit, I can’t watch Flash presentations. I am tired of the blue legos telling me that Flash isn’t supported.

Last, I didn’t miss the camera that didn’t come with my iPad until I got my new iPhone, but now I can’t fathom why it isn’t there. Facetime, on the new iPhone, is a killer app. It changes the way you use your phone and the way you communicate with your friends and relatives. The iPad lets you make Skype calls over Wi-Fi, but there is no Facetime app—and that’s because there is no camera.

I know that the iPad’s book reader is awesome, and that the device can play some cool games.  But these are things I also have on my Macbook Air—and there I have a full keyboard, larger screen, and multiple windows in case I want to take some notes. The iPad doesn’t replace my laptop, and it doesn’t replace my iPhone. So, for me, it’s neither here nor there; it’s simply an extra gadget that I need to carry around.

I am sure that the iPad 2 will have the camera and magnificent new features. And I will, without doubt, get in line and wait for hours with my fanboy comrades on the day it is released. So, Steve, have no fear. You still have a loyal fan. But until then you won’t see me carrying around an iPad or tweeting about how it is going to change the world. (And Steve, no worries about that iPhone antenna, I agree this issue is blown out of proportion.)

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com.

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.

With the new application, users have several ways to tell the team what and where the bugs are. These notifications can be conveyed via messages, screenshots, videos and more to help the developers fix the issue. Users can also indicate the source of a big within a software module and assign the bug to a particular developer in the project.

Users can also define rules that will enable them to organize the bugs and perform actions such as changing the severity, priority, module and assigning the issue to developer when there is a change in the bug status. The interface includes a Bugs list, which gives project leads a view of the bugs that have been recently opened, and offers filtering options (by status, owner, severity, etc). In addition, the list shows what changes each bug has gone through, by whom and when.

Zoho is offering the bug tracing module along with Zoho Projects (plus Wiki and Group Chat) for an annual price of $60 with regular pricing for Zoho Projects starting at $12 per month.

While Zoho faces stiff competition from enormously popular project management application Basecamp, the startup has been trying to spruce up its offering over the past year. Last fall, Zoho added Google Apps integration and launched a Project app in the Google Apps Marketplace earlier this year.

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.

While Zoho Calendar allows you to import events by file or URL, you can now also “subscribe” to another calendar, which will update your calendar regularly. You can subscribe to ‘internal’ calendars (calendars from Zoho applications) or subscribe to any other calendar in ICAL format by providing the URL, which will update your events a couple of times a day. You can also subscribe to your friends’ public calendars using their email addresses.

If you want to make your calendar completely public, Zoho is now allowing you to embed your calendar on an external site. Other new features include an event based view (vs. calendar/date view), the ability to clear a calendar and more.

Of course, Zoho Calendar faces formidable competition from Google Calendar, as well as Microsoft Outlook and iCal. But for Zoho’s 2 million plus users, a unified calendering application across all of the suite’s applications will certainly see heavy use.

This year, Zoho has added a number of updates to its applications, including an upgrade to Zoho Wiki, unified search across applications, integration with Facebook Connect and the addition of an app in the newly launched Google App Marketplace.

This type of growth is impressive from a startup that competes with tech giants like Google and Microsoft and has never received outside funding. So is there any possibility of an exit through an acquisition? Zoho’s Raju Vegesna tells me that the startup has no intention of selling right now.

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.

Zoho Wikis can now be personalized with widgets to create custom dashboards. Widgets aggregate content from YouTube, Google, Box.net as well as other Zoho apps like Zoho Calendar, Zoho Creator and Zoho Chat. Additionally, Zoho is now allowing organizations to customize their wikis with logos, images, layout and more. And the startup has turned on notifications on all the changes happening in a company’s Wiki or Workspace or a particular page.

Zoho continues to improve upon its offerings, and just launched unified search across all of its properties. This allows a user to do a keyword search across an organization’s entire suite, across multiple applications including email, documents, forums, contacts, and more. Zoho now reaches over 2 million users and is even catching the attention of its competition. And not only is the company profitable, but Zoho has never taken venture capital investment. Zoho Wiki faces competition from PBworks and others.

A few months ago, Zoho launched an application with the rollout of the Google App Marketplace and integrated Facebook Connect.

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.

The idea behind search is that it gives a user context behind each search and keyword. For example, if you search for a keyword in Zoho Mail, Zoho Search will display the content of the mail, and additional information such as the Folder in which this mail resides, Sent date, Sender Information etc. Zoho Search also knows if the sender is currently on your buddy list, and based on that, it displays the current presence information (i.e whether the user is online/offline/busy etc) of the sender.

Of course, Zoho search offers users powerful filters to narrow search results by applications, date, and more. And if the search result is an email, you can view the email directly within search results and reply to that mail without having to open the email app. Documents, spreadsheets, presentations and notebooks can also be viewed within the search portal. And you can interact, share and edit within the search portal.

While Zoho has an independent search portal, a universal search box will be will contextually be integrated within all Zoho Apps in the future. The feature will undoubtedly enhance the interoperability of Zoho’s productivity suite. And of course, all of this is possible because of the fact that all of Zoho’s app are in the cloud. It should make the productivity suite much more attractive to the enterprise community.

Zoho has steadily ramped up the acceleration of its productivity suite, reaching over 2 million users and even catching the attention of its competition. A few months ago, Zoho launched an application with the rollout of the Google App Marketplace and integrated Facebook Connect. Last year, startup unveiled a new version of Zoho Reports; launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit.

And over the past two years, Zoho has also added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing.

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.

In the version of Zoho CRM for Google Apps, Zoho will allow Google Apps domain admins choose the users he or she wants to provide access to Zoho CRM and can import users from Google Apps contacts. And if you have Mail Add-on enabled in Zoho CRM, you can POP your email from Google Apps to Zoho CRM. These emails will show up in the CRM system automatically for each contact. Emails sent from Zoho CRM will also show up in Gmail in Google Apps.

Zoho CRM and Projects will also be integrated with Google Apps Calendar. Google Apps users will now be able to subscribe and view their CRM and Projects events right within Google Calendar. Additionally, Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM allows you to attach documents directly from Google Apps.

The fact that Zoho was chosen as a pilot partner for this program isn’t surprising. Although some of Zoho’s applications compete with Google apps products, the startup has consistently pushed interoperability with Google Apps. Over the past two years, the startup launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; and the ability to log-in with Google and Yahoo IDs. And according to our latest stats, Zoho has definitely reached over 2 million users, and has a loyal follower base.

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.

Of course, you can add a social layer to Google Apps, a competitor of sorts to Zoho, with Socialwok. But the plus of using Zoho’s applications is that suite ties into its other productivity applications seamlessly. And Zoho is affordable, with a free version of the suite. Last year, we wrote that Zoho has continued to implement an intelligent strategy to launch new products and add-ons to its existing offerings, partly to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. It looks like Zoho is continuing this strategy in 2010.

The adoption of Facebook Connect makes sense for a number of reasons. First, productivity apps in the enterprise are naturally becoming more social. Second, Facebook, with 400 million users, could bring more traffic to Zoho. Last year, startup unveiled a new version of Zoho Reports; launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit.

And over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing. According to out latest states, Zoho has definitely reached over 2 million users is even catching the attention of its competition.

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).

The version also has full organization, multi-user support so that several employees can access and collaborate on invoices for a particular account. And Zoho has opened up the API for Invoices to that developers can integrate the application into their own applications. Additionally, Zoho features useful bells and whistles such as multi-currency support and email history which tracks your email exchanges with your clients and other users.

The plus of using Zoho’s invoicing application is that it ties into its other productivity applications seamlessly. And its affordable, with a free version and the most expensive version coming in at $35 per month. Last year, we wrote that Zoho has continued to implement an intelligent strategy to launch new products and add-ons to its existing offerings, partly to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. It looks like Zoho is continuing this strategy in 2010.

Last year, startup unveiled a new version of Zoho Reports; launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit.

And over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing. According to out latest states, Zoho has definitely reached over 2 million users is even catching the attention of its competition. Hopefully, 2010 will be as fruitful as 2009.

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.

New functionality includes a dashboard view that lets users collate similar reports and view them all on a single page. Users can also embed the gadget version of Zoho Reports in their iGoogle home page, giving them ready access to their reports and dashboards from their iGoogle page.

Zoho has also established a pricing model for Reports, which will offer a free basic edition with pricing plans starting at $15 per month (for 250,000 rows and 2 users). Launched in 2007, Zoho Reports is a compelling BI tool not only because it is web based but because it provides a plethora of features that many other applications don’t provide.

I feel like I’m starting to sound like a broken record but Zoho has implemented an intelligent strategy to continue to launch new products and add-ons to its existing offerings.Zoho knows that it will have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and soon Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. Most recently, the startup launched a deeper integration with Google Docs; rolled out Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and debuted Zoho Recruit. Over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing.

It looks like the startup’s strategy may be paying off—Zoho has reached over 2 million users in just 4 years and is even catching the attention of its competition.

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.

And while composing emails in Zoho Mail, users can attach files directly from Google Docs and Zoho Docs. Zoho users also have an option to upload files directly from Google Docs to Zoho Docs.
Zoho currently has a limit for users to to upload only 5 files at a time and plans to offer increased flexibility in the future. Lastly, files from Google Docs can now be attached directly in Zoho’s project management app Zoho Projects.

This latest and more robust integration with Google Docs represents Zoho’s compelling strategy to continue to innovate by launching new products and add-ons to its existing offerings. Most recently, the startup launched Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses; and Zoho Recruit. Over the past two years, Zoho has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing.

Zoho knows that it will have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and soon Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. Although Zoho ‘s the underdog, the startup’s strategy may be paying off—the startup has reached 2 million users in just 4 years.

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.

The application will include a database that manages resumes and track potential candidates throughout the interviewing process. You can also schedule interviews, send automatic e-mail notifications and log candidate activities and notes.

Zoho Recruit will also power a platform to create and publish job openings. The app includes an activity stream to let users stay on tops of new within Zoho Recruit and is fully customizable. Zoho Recruit is based on a freemium model, with the more feature-rich platform priced at $12/per user/per month.

Zoho continues to innovate and iterate by launching new products and add-ons to its existing offerings. Most recently, the startup launched Zoho Discussions, a online forum tool for businesses. Over the past two years, Zohos has added support for Sharepoint, mobile, Google and Yahoo IDs and group sharing. Zoho knows that it will have to fight an uphill battle to keep users from flocking to Google Apps and soon Microsoft’s Web-based version of Microsoft 2010. Although Zoho ‘s the underdog, the startup’s strategy may be paying off—the startup has reached 2 million users in just 4 years. And the startup is on Microsoft’s radar, with a Microsoft exec calling of Zoho as a competitor that offered “fake Office capabilities.”

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.

The integration comes on the heels of the initial roll out of Google’s own all-in-one, futuristic collaboration tool, Google Wave. But despite facing competition from the big guns like Microsoft and Google, Zoho continues to remain as a player in the document management space thanks to continuous innovations and iterations to its products. It’s almost reminiscent of Salesforce.com’s strategy.

In fact, because of this highly competitive landscape, integrations are vital to the software’s success as an application suite. Recently, Zoho launched integration with Microsoft Sharepoint as well as with Microsoft Access. Zoho’s project management application, Zoho Projects 2.0, also added the capability to import existing projects from MS Project, Microsoft’s project management desktop software. And Zoho also launched a forum tool, called Zoho Discussions. It looks like the startup’s strategy is paying off—Zoho has been able to accumulate 2 million users in just 4 years.