Search Results for: "zoho creator"

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Zoho Creator Expands Google AppEngine’s Reach

I’ve written about Zoho Creator before – being techno-challenged myself, the key value for me (and I suppose for millions of potential users) is the ability to generate database driven situated applications without the need for any programming.   Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu made an interesting statement back in April:

In principle, it would be possible to layer Zoho Creator on top of Google App Engine  on top of Amazon EC2.

Well, it’s no longer just in principle: today Zoho announced the ability to use Zoho Creator to generate applications which are then deployed on Google’s AppEngine.  Here’s a short video explaining the process:

The video focuses mostly on the process of how to create an app, convert it from Zoho’s own Deluge scripting environment to Python, then installing it on the Google AppEngine.  You will get more detailed explanation elsewhere, let me just focus on why I find this an important step.

Zoho essentially expands Google’s reach, making it available to users without programming skills.  It’s a perfect marriage: Zoho brings the ability to create programs without coding in a user-friendly graphical environment, while Google brings  security for those who might worry keeping their apps and data with a smaller provider: now they can use the Zoho-generated apps in the safety of GoogLand. smile_wink.

The other important aspect is portability, and to quote Zoho’s Raju Vegesna, first they let data be free by releasing CloudSQL, and now they let your applications free.

We’ve already seen Zoho adapt Google Gears first, even before Google Apps;  this is now another example of friendly coopetition with Google.

(Disclaimer: Zoho is the exclusive Sponsor of Cloudave, my main blogging gig.)

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Build Applications Without Coding in Zoho Creator 2.0

Yesterday TechMeme featured an interesting  discussion on Why (some) journalists should learn (some) code. Matt Waite, the reporter makes his case about data analysis and presentation being important parts of journalism today.  He offers up small chunks of script, then explains them in plain English.  Of course the problem is, you still need to know the code, the translation is one-way, from script to English, you can’t built an application the other way around… or .. can you?

Well, almost.  That’s the problem the newly released version of Zoho Creator tackles.  Creator, a database / custom application generator tool has been available for quite a while, Zoho claims there are over 30,000 applications built by users.  Here’s a comparative review by Ismael Ghalimi at ITRedux.  The key new features in Release 2.0:

  • Completely revamped User Interface –  Now you can create your app by simple dragging & dropping elements.
  • Script Builder: Create code without knowing code.  Add advanced processing logic by dragging chunks of script from a list of easy-to-understand functions.
  • Simply embed your Input Forms and Data Views in web-sites, blogs and other Zoho Applications

This video provides a short overview on using Zoho Creator.  This longer, 8-minute version focuses on how to build scripts.

 

Here’s a good example of Christopher Conway, Professor of Literature, a non-techie in his own words building a course database in Zoho Creator – and that was in the “old” release.  Getting back to the journalism question above: yes, it is useful if you can build simple database application, but you really no longer have to learn coding anymore.  Don’t take my word for it: go ahead, play with it. smile_wink

(Update: See Thomas’s first impressions here.)

 

Finally, a little bonus to my readers: I have a few free tickets to give away to Zoho’s Yacht Party at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston next week.  If you’d like to attend, please register here using promo code 7410.  When the promo code no longer works, tickets are sold out.

 

Related posts:  Wired, Mashable, ZDNet, Web Worker Daily, ConnectedInternet.

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Zoho Launches Application Marketplace

Having seen the power of Zoho Creator & DB I predicted Zoho would create a Marketplace eventually. Ten days ago Information week leaked the news, we wouldn’t have to wait long – and now it’s here: the Zoho Application Marketplace.

Ever since the famous Google Chrome Comic book, the gold standard for product announcement is just that: comics. Ladies and Gentlemen, enjoy the following comic video announcement:

There’s a catalogue of business applications, but if you don’t find an app you need, spec it out, and receive offers from developers. Either way the apps are owned by the developers who set their own pricing and keep 100% of the revenue.

If they don’t take a commission, then what’s in it for Zoho? Clearly, having more situated software apps will drive up subscription demand. Zoho Creator (the platform Marketplace is built on) is free up to 10 applications, and there are several price levels above that.

On day one the ‘shelves’ no doubt will not be fully stocked but Zoho hopes developers will quickly jump on the opportunity. After all there are over 100K apps used by the Creator community. Clearly not all marketable, but even less than 1% can create a lively market.

Marketplace comes on the heels of a new release, Zoho Creator 3 (see video)

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Google Gears-powered Offline Mail, Application Marketplace by Zoho

Planned releaseLeak?  it doesn’t matter anymore, InformationWeek has just pre-announced two planned major Zoho upgrades:

Zoho Creator 3 will come with an apps marketplace, something I asked for a while ago. The App Store will allow developers set their own prices and keep 100% of the revenue.  It will also become a code-to-order marketplace: if you don’t find an app you need, spec it out, and receive offers from developers.

Now for the fun part: since the Chrome Comic Book, what better way to introduce a major new offering then by a comic video?

(Update:  Since the news was indeed unintentionally leaked, not released, I took off the embedded video.  The 356 of you who saw it: consider it a preview.  An updated version will be back @ Launch)

The other major announcement is making Zoho’s Web-based Mail service available off-line, based on Google Gears.  This will no doubt give Zoho Mail a competitive edge for a while.

It’s somewhat ironic that Zoho is always first to implement Google Gears (is Zoho doing Google’s testing?)  but if the past is any indication, Google’s own Gmail should follow suit soon.

Both upgrades are expected to go live in the coming weeks.

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Zoho Enters Human Resources Market with Zoho People.

(I broke up my originally long post into two pieces: this one about the product announcement, and the next one with the business analysis)

Zoho, best known for their Web-based Productivity (Office+) Suite today released Zoho People, a feature-rich On-Demand HRMS – Human Resources Management System.

Several modules support the work of managers, HR professionals:

  • Organization for defining corporate and departmental structure
  • Recruitment for managing recruitment processes and maintaining resume databases
  • Checklist for defining business processes and workflows in the organization
  • Forms for defining custom business forms using the integrated Zoho Creator
  • Dashboard to overview it all

All the setup, be it form changes, new forms or field, org chart changes ..etc happens via a friendly drag-and-drop interface.

While all the above is for Management, HR, perhaps Training, Travel professionals, most “regular” employees in a company would only access the Self Service Module, which is split to an Employee and a Manager Self-Service section. Requests can be sent to the HR department on job openings, employees can submit information like Expense Reports, Vacation, Training Requests to the relevant departments/managers as pre-defined in the workflow…etc.

For a detailed feature overview, watch this demo video.


Zoho People from Raju Vegesna on Vimeo.

The application is currently in Beta, and for the Beta period it will be free, independent of the number of users. After the Beta pricing will likely involve a dual scheme, with ad-hoc users (regular employee accessing Self Service) paying less than full users (typically HR professionals.) While no numbers have been announced, Zoho claims the blended price level will be disruptive – something to the scale of Zoho CRM, which is about 10% of the cost of it’s main competitor.

Talk about CRM, it’s worth mentioning that while Zoho’s fame comes from the Office Suite (or the extended suite of Productivity Apps), this is not their first foray into business applications. Zoho People joins Zoho CRM, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Projects and Zoho DB. Below is an overview of the entire Zoho Portfolio:

Please read my next post for a business analysis on what Zoho’s entry to the HCM space means.

(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor for Zoho.)

Related posts:  Between the Lines,  Zoho Blogs, Deal Architect, Centernetworks, Wired,

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Web Forms Gain Popularity

Web forms are increasingly popular, as they provide an easy way to solicit user input, manage a database in the background, and display data in a controlled form. Typical uses are contact forms (this blog has one), surveys, signup-sheets.   Wufoo is perhaps the most popular standalone form builder, but as popular as they are, Google’s entry to the space will likely bring more visibility to Web form use cases. 

I set up a very rudimentary web form to demonstrate their use, but I am cheating: I took the data from Google Operating System and populated my database – sorry, Ionut, I don’t get anywhere close to your huge reader base.smile_wink   Please fill out the form below.

Although the form captures the time of entry, I am not displaying it below, to demonstrate that once can control the re-use of data after user entry.

You can manipulate the above data, filter it, sort it by clicking on the column headers, search the contents…etc. 

Oh… is this more than you’ve seen on the other Google forms?  And they’ve told you the lists were not embeddable?  Sorry .. I’m cheating: I’ve re-created Ionut’s  form in Zoho Creator. smile_tongue  (Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho – but I am making a point by doing this.)

 

Different people will always prefer different tools.  I don’t have any statistics, but I would assume the number of users for database-like tools (MS Access, Dabble DB, Zoho Creator & DB) is by an order of magnitude less than the number of spreadsheet users.  A lot of basic spreadsheet users don’t perform calculations, don’t use pivot tables – they just  create tables to track lists. (See my earlier rant on why JotSpot’s tracker is not a real spreadsheet).  For their sake it’s nice to be able to have simple form support inside a spreadsheet, which is what they can now get from Google.

Several reviewers of the new Google Forms were missing field verification, calculated numeric fields…etc. These features and more are supported in Zoho Creator, which in fact allows you to build mini-apps by dropping script elements, without actually coding.  Those who want more database manipulation can use Zoho DB. These are powerful applications, but which one to use when can be confusing to less technically inclined users (like yours truly).  Hence simple forms in a spreadsheet are a good idea.   But let me dream a little – here’s how I’d like to see web-based collaboration some day:

It won’t be about formats and applications – it will be about free-flowing thoughts and the data encapsulating them.  Of course there will be differences in application capabilities, but it’s entirely likely that what you can manipulate in your database application, I will access using a spreadsheet. Likewise, I may write something in a wiki, and you want to edit it in an online word processor.  It’s not a dream, we’re heading that way.  For example Zoho’s wiki and Writer apps share a basically similar editor, Zoho DB introduced pivot tables which will show up in Sheet in the near future.  I am impatient, would like to see this sharing happen faster, but have to accept the realities of how the leading Web companies work: individual products first, integration later.  But we’ll get there… to the vision of format-less web-collaboration.

Oh, and until then, Welcome Creator Mini Google Forms.smile_teeth

Related posts: Rev2.org, Download Squad, Digital Trends, Sunny Talks Tech, Webware.com, Compiler, Search Engine Roundtable, Googlified, Search Engine Journal, CenterNetworks, Google Operating System, TechCrunch, Google Blogoscoped, SEO and Tech Daily, Lifehacker, Gear Diary and Techmamas

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Zoho in the Entertainment Business?

You read it here first: Zoho must be planning to take over the entertainment business. Need proof? Just watch the promo video for Zoho Creator Mobile version. Gone are the screenshots, canned demos… it’s all Life 2.0 smile_shades

Hm… I hope his sweethearts’s phone number is not real … otherwise he’s got competition for that movie.smile_tongue

On a more serious note: Zoho is mostly known for their Office Suite and are often compared to Google and Microsoft, when talking about documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Database management and application generation are often overlooked, probably since Google does not have anything to offer in these areas. But Zoho does, and in fact that’s the application that attracts the largest active user base. Creator allows non-tech-types (like yours truly) to easily create fairly sophisticated applications, which are often shared by dozens or hundreds of users. There are about 60K (!)applications developed in Creator, used by over half a million people. (Side note: there must be a fair amount of redundancy among 60 thousand applicationss, and while you can share them publicly today, I’d like to see Zoho develop the search / categorization tools to easily locate them; a sort of “marketplace” even if there’s no actual money flow.)

We can’t really talk about Creator without mentioning a related product: Zoho DB. While Creator is an application generator, DB is primarily for data manipulation, analysis and reporting. Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu explains the differences here.

Computerworld recently listed Zoho Creator amongst the Five free Web apps we can’t live without. There is also a blog started started by users, entirely dedicated to Zoho Creator, with special focus on using it as a small business software platform: Land of Zoho Creator.

(Disclaimer: I’m an Advisor to Zoho.)

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Zoho DB for Data Manipulation & Reporting

Impeccable timing: just days after Computerworld named Zoho Creator one of five web apps they can’t live without, Zoho DB is released today. While Creator is an application generator, DB is primarily for data manipulation, analysis and reporting. You can create a new database or import your dataset from an existing spreadsheet, be it Zoho’s own Sheet or MS Excel. The UI is instantly familiar, as it reminds us of a spreadsheet, but one with drag-and-drop goodness, allowing the user to easily analyse data, create charts, reports, which, as typical with Zoho apps you can embed in your web page or blog, and of course other Zoho Apps.

Fur deeper analysis you can create Pivot Tables with simple drag & drop. Zoho DB Supports Query Tables – tables created based on a select query from a different table. It understands queries in many SQL dialects: Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Informix and ANSI SQL. This sets Zoho DB apart from the rest of the industry, and it’s made possible by leveraging another Adventnet (Zoho’s parent) product: SwisSQL. In the near future it will also allow users to import and export database schemas.

The best way to get a feel for the capabilities is to watch the video introduction, then get your hands “dirty” by diving into Zoho DB yourself.

Some of Zoho DB’s features will soon be available in Zoho’s spreadsheet application giving users a choice where they analyze their data – and of course you will be able to access the same data via applications built with Zoho Creator.

Attendees at the recent Wiki: Beauty & Beast event heard Zoho’s Raju Vegesna talk about how eventually Word processors like Zoho Writer and Wikis should morph into each other. This may sound off-topic, but it’s another hint to Zoho’s philosophy of allowing users access their data via their application of choice, no matter which other application they used to create it. It’s all about the (work) flow, not data formats.:-)

See also: TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, CenterNetworks, Zoho Blogs , Mashable!, Between the Lines,

Update: Ouch, Rod reveals Zoho’s most secret plans: Today – Zoho DB – Tomorrow – Zoho Beer

Update (9/6): Ask Zoho: What’s the difference between Zoho DB, Creator & Sheet?

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Zoho Adds Wiki to Online Suite – It’s All Coming Together

It’s nice to get your dream fulfilled fast.  Writing about Socialtext 2.0 in October I wrote:  “My ‘dream setup‘ for corporate collaboration: a wiki with an integrated Office 2.0 Suite.”

A little later in my post on the JotSpot/Google deal I specifically called for my friends at Zoho (I’m an advisor to the company)  “to make their move soon: they either need to come up with their own wiki, or team up with a wiki company…So far Zoho is ahead of Google in Office 2.0, if they want to maintain that leadership, they will need a wiki one way or another.”

I did not have to wait long, Zoho Wiki is here, announced simultaneously on TechCrunch and the Zoho Blog

This product is perhaps the first showcase of how Zoho’s long term product strategy will play out.  To begin with, if you are a registered user for some of Zoho’s other products, your single sign-on automatically gives you access to the Wiki.  (For now you can create 3 wikis, but I don’t expect this restriction to last long.)

While most wikis I know of started their life without  WYSIWYG editing – yes, you had to write ugly markup language – Zoho Wiki shares the codebase of Zoho Writer, so right at the start you have all the bells and whistles of the popular editor, including formatting options, special characters, emoticons, inserting tables and a spell checker, amongst others.  As for appearance, there are 5 themes to select from, should you not like the default one.

A wiki is all about linking: Zoho supports multiple options of creating new pages and linking to them:

  1. there is a large “create new page” button displayed consistently on all pages
  2. you can use the link icon from the editor and pick wiki pages, email addresses or external URLs.
  3. you can just type a WikiWord (also known as CamelCase) to create a page and link to it. (LinkAsYouThink)

#1 above is normally followed by creating links to the new page, but my personal preference is either #2 or #3, both of which create a “shell”, i.e. a link to a not-yet-existing page, that you can click on to actually create/edit the new page – this is way you can be sure you won’t end up with orphan pages. (I wrote more extensively about the orphan problem here)

Perhaps the most distinctive feature is how you can embed objects from other Zoho and 3rd-party applications: spreadsheets, graphs, presentations, forms, videos, slideshows…etc.  The screen-shot below comes from my test wiki, where I used a chart originally plotted in Zoho Sheet, using data coming from Zoho Polls, and originally published on my blog.

Pre-Google JotSpot became known as the “application wiki” for including a few pre-defined forms; think of the possibilities when you can use the full power of Zoho Creator to create forms/applications and embed them in your wiki.   Of course whichever application the data is updated in, it will be reflected in all other apps, typical Zoho-style.

For non-Zoho apps, see these two examples: a Youtube video and a Bubbleshare slideshow embedded in a Zoho wiki.

As for permissioning, both read and edit access can be independently set to either private / everyone or group; group members then can be managed individually.  What I would like to see in the future is the ability to centrally manage “groups” across all Zoho apps: for example set up a group in Virtual Office, where all my contacts are, then just refer to the group by name to share spreadsheets, wikis, presentations..etc.

And talk about wishlist, since I was recently fairly critical about SocialText 2.0, I have to be fair and state that I am missing some of the same features here, too: inbound links (backlinks), breadcrumbs to ease navigation, nested comments, improved history, and the ability to email to wiki pages.  The Zoho team reassured me that these are planned for future updates.

Notably absent is attachment handling and versioning, a standard feature in better business wikis, yet I don’t consider it an omission, rather good strategy. Why?  Document management/versioning in wikis solves a critical problem, but does so on the basis on yesterday’s (OK, today’s ) technology.  Even with proper versioning one has to download documents, locally update them, then upload them back up to the wiki. 

That’s a lot of work, and Zoho has a an easier, more streamlined  approach to do it all online. Not only they integrate Writer, Sheet and Show to the wiki, but have also provided tools to easily access documents originated by Word, Excel, Powerpoint online.

The current integration is still somewhat clumsy (but working): you invoke the applications separately, save your work, and either link to the document’s URL from within the wiki, or embed it by using the “insert html” icon.   What I’d like to see eventually:

  • Easy access to invoke to editor / sheet /show ..etc applications from inside a wiki page – perhaps a colored area on the sidebar
  • Smart linking: link button would bring up list of not just wiki pages but all my Sheet, Writer ..etc files
  • Single button embedding without having to copy/paste html code
  • Last but not least, text search not only of wiki pages but all my data across all Zoho applications.

Considering Zoho’s breakneck speed of product releases, I am quite optimistic that we don’t have to wait long.  It’s all coming together – in 2007.

smile_regular

 

Related posts:

 

 

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Office 2.0 – Under the Radar Event at SAP Labs

IBDNetwork’s Under the Radar event at SAP Labs was a lively evening with full house, good discussion and four exciting companies.  Prior to the presentations moderator Mike Arrington (TechCrunch) and the panel discussed pro’s and con’s of Office 2.0. 

Part of the discussion was whether “Office 2.0” is just an attempt to replicate existing functions on the Web.

Peter Rip’s take was that  such replication is pointless: the web-based apps cannot come close to the incumbent (MS Office) in functionality and they stand no chance to unseat it in the corporate world.  The real promise of Office 2.0 in Peter’s view is creating processes-mashups, supporting business in entirely new ways.

Ismael Ghalimi’s response was that partial “replication” is OK, in reality the MS Office products are way too complex, 90% of users probably only use 10% of the functionality.  The added value is the ease of collaboration, and also easier integration, as it would be demonstrated by Zoho in a few minutes. I tend to agree with Ismael, as I stated before.

 

The Panel: Peter Rip, Sam Schillace, Etay Gafni, and Ismael Ghalimi

The Panel

(photo credit: Dan Farber, ZDNet)

 

After the initial discussion the four invited companies each had 5 minutes for a presentation/demo, followed by another 5 minutes of Q/A.  Although the theme of the evening was Office 2.0,  2 out of 4 presenters were not strictly speaking “office” companies – the Web 2.0 moniker would better fit them:  Wetpaint and Collectivex.  They also have something in common: a strong focus on groups, communities – but they take rather different approaches with CollectiveX being rather structured, whereas Wetpaint is an open book that the users get to write.

 

Wetpaint was presented by Ben Elowitz, Founder and CEO.  Technically Wetpaint is a wiki, but the best part is that one really does not have to know wikis, just happily type away and create attractive pages without the usual learning curve. More than that: these pages can be shared, other users can contribute, entire communities can grow and thrive. 

It’s an ad-supported free web-based service that combines the best of wikis, blogs, and forum software.

  • It’s like a wiki: you can create any number of pages, arrange them in a hierarchy, navigate through them top-down in a tree fashion, or via direct links between pages. Anyone can edit any page a’la wiki (optionally pages can be locked, too). There is version control, audit track of changes and previous releases can be restored at a single click.
  • It’s like a discussion forum: you can have threaded/nested comments attached to each page
  • It’s like a blog: editable area in the middle, sidebars on both sides with tags and other info.  Personally I’d like to see more blog-like features, like pinging blog indices (Technorati and others), trackback support, etc.  Ben confirmed some of these are on the way – when it happens, I believe Wetpaint will take off big time – after all, discoveribility is critical in building online communities.

All panelists were impressed with the simplicity and elegance of the UI, but someone (don’t remember if panel or audience) commented this is just one of many similar products available.  
I beg to differ.  Yes, in a room of 60-80 techies we can all use (?)  any other wiki easily.  Not so in “real life”. I’ve set up wikis for companies, ad-hoc workgroups and events for the general public – there’s a whole world of difference. In a company you have a common purpose, set objectives, can provide training – not so in the consumer/ community space.  Take a look at the Wetpaint site we set up for the Techdirt Greenhouse (un)conference, or Road Trips USA (pic link above) on the fun side. 
I challenge anyone to find another “wiki” with comparable features yet is so easy that anyone who can type and click (i.e. use a simple editor) will be able to contribute without any learning.

Update (8/18): Robert Scoble hits the nail on the head:  it’s all about the Blink Test.  Wetpaint passes it. Other wikis don’t.

 

Collectivex Founder and CEO Clarence Wooten described his service as LinkedIn meets Yahoo Groups.   Mike Arrington’s definition (not as moderator, but earlier on TechCrunch): “CollectiveX is what LinkedIn should have been.”   It’s social networking based on groups, rather than individuals, facilitating communication, providing file sharing, messaging, calendaring and exchange of leads/contacts.  Revenue model: free base, subscription for a few premium features.

 

I admit I suffer from Social Network burnout.  I do find some of them useful, especially LinkedIn, and I can think of a few groups I am a member of where we could use CollectiveX – I am simply tired of creating zillion version of my profile.   I’d like a “Profile Central” where all these new services could pick up my data from. Am I dreaming?  Wasn’t AlwaysOn/GoingOn supposed to somehow resolve the profile portability problem?

Of course this is just my ranting, although the audience questions pointed in the same direction, albeit indirectly: nice functionality, but isn’t incumbent LinkedIn too entrenched for new social networks to challenge its position? 

 

Echosign Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin’s task was perhaps more difficult, perhaps easier: unlike the other three, his service could not be identified with a few words, he had to explain a new process flow. On the other hand he is addressing an ugly enough problem that he captured everyone’s attention: No matter how well computerized we are, when it comes to signing contracts, we’re back to the world of paper, faxes, lost documents.  Echosign is a web-based service that takes care of the entire process flow( see slide below) : getting documents signed (electronically or hand-signature by fax), filed and distributed as pdf, routed, approved, managed, archived. 

While technically this is SaaS, I guess Software Enabled Service is a better description than Software as a Service:-)  EchoSign addresses a painful enough problem with a simple and elegant solution that it won the Panel’s Award. Congratulations to Jason and team!

 

 Zoho Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu did not bring us just one product but an entire productivity Suite. How do you demo 4 products in 5 minutes?  (Not that he only has four, at my last count the company has 10 Zoho-branded products).  The solution: you don’t.  Instead of focusing on individual products, you demonstrate the power and ease of integration between them.

Sridhar pulled up a sample spreadsheet of sales figures and a chart; he changed some numbers in Zoho Sheet and of course the chart changed, too.  Next with a few clicks he dropped data in a window and voila! – a Zoho Creator application just got created. We then saw the data entry form show up on a slide – part of Zoho Show.  The same form, or other data views can also be embedded in Zoho Writer documents, or even in an email.  As Sridhar kept on switching screens, one could almost get lost, but he got his point through: whichever application he changed the data in, it would show up real-time in the other application.  I don’t have his presentation, but can present a similar scenario I used on my blog earlier.  First I collected votes in a blog post using a Zoho Polls entry form –here are the results.  Useful chart, not as impressive as the spreadsheet’s charting capability though, so I dropped the results in Zoho Sheet, which generated the pie chart below:

Do you like the new Technorati?  Poll results in % - http://www.zohosheet.com

 The chart has it’s own URL, it’s easy to embed in a blog (this post), document or presentation,  and so does the entire spreadsheet itself.

Clearly the format of the Zoho presentation was a compromise, focusing on integration, but I think it paid off, the audience clearly got the picture that instead of randomly selected applications Zoho has a complete office/productivity Suite to offer.  The tradeoff of course was not seeing detailed functionality – which is probably why panelist Peter Rip commented that the creation of these documents did not appear to be a collaborative process.   As I have played with the Zoho Suite before, I know it is indeed very collaborative and the Zoho folks might want to call Peter and offer him a more detailed demo.   The audience was very interested, in fact after the official event Zoho set up a demo station outside where they continued answering questions for a good half an hour or so.  Some of those inquiries were about the ability to buy and implement the Suite behind a corporate firewall – something that Zoho is not ready for at this stage, but the interest level certainly bodes well for a future corporate business model.  The immediate reward to Zoho came in the form of votes: Zoho won the Audience’s Choice for Best Product Award.

Congratulations to Sridhar and his team!

Last, but not least, thanks to IBDNetwork for organizing another successful event.  

This was just the beginning: Office 2.0 enthusiast, or just about anybody interested, come join as at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, October 12-13.

 

 

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