3-year Old Millionaires
Blogging, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS September 17th, 2008
No, not talking about babies here, but two Tech icons who both reached the Million milestone around their third birthday.
TechCrunch, launched 3-year ago as Mike Arrington’s hobby blog had 1 million Feedburner subscribers for the first time last week. Of course it’s no longer a hobby blog, but a blog network run by a professional CEO, supported by a growing blogger team. Mike himself has become a Silicon Valley institution, his Atherton home Web 2.0 Central.
Congratulations, Mike! And Congrat’s to the other 3-year old millioinaire: Zoho.
When Zoho Writer launched three years ago it was the underdog compared to Writely (which later became Google Docs). But it improved week by week, was soon joined by Zoho Sheet, and one had to be blind not to
see the benefits of a complete Suite on the Net. Today Zoho has a million users, is recognized as a leader along with Google, has made inroads to the Enterprise (400K users at GE? Not bad…), The Economist calls them the force that will Deflate IT… a lot of achievements in three years.
Once again, congratulations to both… and now the race is on: who will reach the 2 Million mark first? 
Tags: Blogging, cloud computing, Collaboration, Google, millionaire, office 2.0, SaaS, techcrunch, web 2.0, web office, zoho
Office 2.0, a Most Irregular Conference – Get Your Discount Here
Bay Area, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups August 25th, 2008

Nothing about the Office 2.0 Conference is even remotely ordinary.
Start with the organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of a VC-funded startup, Intalio. That’s normally a full-time job – not when it comes to Ismael: he is also a scuba-diving instructor, a pilot, launched Monolab|Workspace, (is that Incubator 2.0?), launched the Extreme Productivity Seminar series, oh, and have I mentioned the annual Office 2.0 Conference? ( I actually know his secret, he has two body doubles, I just haven’t been able to prove it yet
)
Pressed for time he is turning a necessity into a virtue: year by year the Conference is a showcase of creating a successful event out of nothing in only two months. I remember the first event in 2006, when a couple of us Enterprise Irregulars were helping him plan the sessions only weeks away from the start. A few days and a few blog posts later Ismael got flooded with request for sponsor and speaking slots. This year history repeats itself: just a month ago the conference site was a placeholder and one could only wonder if … then a new site was born overnight, based on Jive Software’s excellent ClearSpace platform, and now it’s alive with user participation, sponsors, registration..etc.
What’s a Web-focused Conference without wi-fi? It’s a joke that in 2008 conferences, including brands like Web 2.0, Gnomedex …etc. still fail to provide sufficient connection. Ismael’s solution includes laser beams to the top of the building, another one down to a terrace, then inside – making it happen with Swisscom was quite a project in itself. Office 2.0 set the standard once and for all, anything less at major conferences is a failure.
Then there’s the issue of The Gadget. I believe the iPod at the first conference was just more-then-generous swag. The iPhones handed out at the second conference had an integral part at the event: several applications released specifically for Office 2.0 allowed participants to interact with each other, navigate the schedule and find sessions. This time all paid participants will receive a the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.
Yes, the conference swag is not pens, stickers or t-shirts: it’s a mini-computer, which cost about half the registration fee. It will clearly raise eyebrows, and many would prefer to skip the gadget and pay reduced fees. I think handing out such an expensive gadget will have an interesting effect on the conference demographic: we’ll likely see an increase of corporate employees, who can expense the entire conference and are less price-sensitive than startups and freelancers – the original Office 2.0 crowd.
But that may very well be what the conference needs. There’s a reason why this year’s theme is Enterprise Adoption. The Office 2.0 movement wouldn’t go very far with only the early pioneers, evangelists talking to themselves, dissmissing enterprise requirements. For the principles to become practice in business, we need a more balanced mix, and in a twisted way the gadget may just help achieve that.
Those who can’t afford the full registration are not entirely locked out: Socialtext CEO and top evangelist Ross Mayfield will facilitate Un-Conference 2.0 the day before the official conference, at a cost of $50.
Finally, startups have a chance to present the attending VCs, media, bloggers at LaunchPad – Ismael announced this event over the weekend, and already has 10 particpants – get in there while you can. Note to my (numerous) VC readers: I hope you will be there, too.
If you’re still hesitating, check out the Agenda, the list of Speakers, Media representatives, and if you haven’t done so, register now.
I’ve saved the best for last: don’t use the standard registration, save $100 by registering here.
Update: while I was typing here, fellow Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett explained why this is an Irregular (pun intended) Conference in more than one way. Update to the update: see Susan’s excellent summary.
(cross-posted on the Conference Blog)
Tags: cloud computing, Collaboration, o208, o2con, office 2.0, office 2.0 conference, office2.0, On-Demand, online, productivity, SaaS, web office
What Are a Million Users Worth? Zoho Thinks a Lot.
Business, SaaS August 6th, 2008
The first time I wrote about Zoho – the “Safer Office” they had less than 50 thousand users – not a lot for a web service. Today they announced having a million users – and that’s just direct Zoho users, not including those served by Baihui in China, or any other white label providers. Back then they had 3 products: Writer, Sheet and CRM – today the list includes 17 Applications, 5 Add-ons and 4 Utilities.
The chart below shows steady growth in monthly new registrations – the sudden spike in May is the effect of opening Zoho Apps to users with Google and Yahoo accounts.
Now, you may ask, what are a million users worth in the world of freebies? Web startups do go out of business not being able to monetize their popularity. Zoho’s story has been that Adventnet, the parent company with “boring” but reliable, cash-cow network management products is financing the “Zoho experience”. Well, here’s an update to that story: the Zoho brand itself has been self-sustaining for a while now.
While Zoho does not disclose numbers – it’s their prerogative, being a closely held private company – they apparently have paying users. The number one revenue generator is Zoho CRM, that they were asked to abandon in order to be allowed to join Salesforce.com’s Appexchange. Apparently they made the right decision, and instead of being relegated to providing an Office Suite only, they keep on adding business applications like Projects, Invoice, People, Meeting..etc. Incidentally, these apps are where Zoho makes their money.
The free Office and other apps with the million-or-so users are Zoho’s main marketing vehicle. As we often discussed here, they don’t have a Sales force, in fact they don’t “sell” as such: the products sell themselves. This trend will likely increase as Zoho now increasingly focuses on integrating existing services rather then just pumping out new ones.
That is not to say that the Office Suite can’t became a source of significant revenue, but perhaps from a less expected source: while Zoho strives to become the outsourced IT department for small businesses (SMB) they have seen a flurry of large enterprise inquiries recently. I am aware of ongoing projects with customers that even enterprise software giants SAP or Oracle would consider strategic, key accounts – let alone Microsoft. 
As for the one millionth user: Zoho CRM user Dean Detton of Prestige Automation Inc has been invited to celebrate at the Zoho Party during the Office 2.0 Conference on September 4th.
The address for the party is: 1 Cloud Avenue. See you there! 
(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho)
Related articles by Zemanta
- NetSuite, Zoho post app suite gains
- Zoho’s millions
- Zoho hits a million accounts with a superior product range

Tags: adventnet, cloud computing, CloudAve, crm, office 2.0, SaaS, web office, zoho
The TechCrunch Fablet
Technology July 21st, 2008
Fablet: FireFox + Tablet. The $200 device Mike Arrington & Co wants to build:
We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.

I can’t figure out if this is real or a joke.. but we’re far from April Fool’s Day.
I have a strong Deja Vu feeling though. Last year I shared a Bloggers’ table with Ismael Ghalimi at a conference and watched him feverishly work away on the Redux Model 1. He showed me some of the documentation, in a matter of a few hours exchanged specs then placed an order with component suppliers – the guy was totally obsessed. As skeptical as I had been before, I started to wonder if he might just be able to pull it off – his energy level was just radiating…
But in the end, all the effort (and quite some money Ismael spent along the way) came down to nothing (at least for now): The Office 2.0 Conference gadget will be an HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.
That said, the Redux Model 1 was one guy’s heroic effort, while this project will largely be crowdsourced. Still, the hardware business is tough … I have one advice to Mike: talk to Ismael.
Update: It is not a joke:
The reason why we announced today is because we have the manufacturing/prototype etc. setup now, along with design (which we will also post for feedback etc.)
Update (7/23): Two days later, here’s the commentary from Ismael: Where is the Redux Model 1?
Tags: fablet, firefox, hardware, o2con, office 2.0, Office20con, tablet, techrunch, web tablet
Zoho Launches in China @ Baihui.com
Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS April 24th, 2008
Just days ago we read that China, already the world leader in cellphone use, has surpassed the USA as the No. 1 nation in Internet users., so of course it’s a huge market that SaaS providers would love to enter. What better way than have the market come to you?
That’s what happened to Zoho when their Beijing Office was contacted by PC Stars, the largest online distributor in China with more than 2400 resellers and over 1000 system integrators. The are assembling a portal at Baihui, currently offering specific search and productivity tools. Their search products appear to be geared to product groups like software, hardware, games and automotive.
For the productivity apps they teamed up with Zoho, who would provide white-label versions of their products. After a few months of private beta testing, Baihui built a new data center (*), and today they are launching the Zoho Suite under their own brand:
- Zoho Writer – Baihui Xiexie
- Zoho Sheet – Baihui Gege
- Zoho Show – Baihui Xiuxiu
- Zoho CRM – Baihui CRM
These apps will be offered free to individual users, just like they are in the US, and CRM will have a similar pricing, too: free for the first 3 users, then 99RMB /user/months, which is about $14, close to the US pricing. (I would have thought Chinese prices to be less, but they know what they’re doing…) Baihui will later add other Zoho (Business) products.
Zoho’s current user base is 800,000 adding 100k about every 5-6 weeks, and they certainly expect that number to jump with the China deal.
OEM-ing their product is not unusual for Zoho, and especially for the parent company: there are other deals under consideration, and if you own a D-Link access point, chances are the wifi-manager software you have is from Adventnet. I plan to write a backgrounder on Adventnet, their approach to business and their international presence in the near future.
(* Please note, Baihui’s investment is into their own data center, running the Zoho Apps, not Zoho’s parent company, Adventnet, as (first) incorrectly reported on TechCrunch.) Update: it’s now fixed on TC.
Tags: baihau, china, office 2.0, SaaS, web office, zoho
Zoho Expands Group Collaboration
Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME February 27th, 2008
Today’s Zoho Writer update is not what it looks like. Yes, I get the story about:
- DocX Support
- Thesaurus (in 10 languages)
- Enhanced Endnotes/Footnotes
- Enhanced Headers/Footers
..etc, but that’s not what I find exciting. DocX support? Personally, I don’t care, MS Office 2003 was the last version I bought, people much smarter than me call it a completely insane format … but hey, the Borg is the market leader, so why not support it… Layout improvements? I’m already in a paperless world, barely ever print, so I don’t really care about these features. But Microsoft Office was created at a time when the purpose of document creation was to eventually print it, and in our legacy world the challenger is measured against the standards of the incumbent, so, yes, I can accept these are important features for Writer. Besides, the academic / student community has been dying for endnotes / footnotes, so now they can have it. 
But the hidden bomb here isn’t just a Writer improvement: it’s a feature that shows Zoho’s hands regarding collaboration in the entire Zoho Business Suite. Yes, I am talking about Group Sharing. After all, one of the key drivers behind moving to web-based Office applications is to enable easier collaboration.
Most of the collaborative apps, including Zoho or mighty Google typically allow either public sharing, or inviting users individually, but until now there has been no way to share your documents with a predefined set of users, i.e. members of a group. A year and a half ago I praised Google Groups for stepping out of being just a group email mechanism, becoming a mini community/collaborative platform – but the definition of a “group”, i.e.it’s members does not exist outside the Groups application, I can’t share Google Docs or Spreadsheets with my Group. (And make no mistake it’s been the same with Zoho until now.)
With today’s update you can now create a Group in the ‘My Account‘ section of Zoho, and that Group is recognizable in any other Zoho Application, including Writer, Sheet or even Zoho Mail. Eventually there will be multiple privacy / sharing levels within the Zoho Universe:
- private
- shared with individual email id’s
- shared with Groups (defined once, recognized in all apps)
- shared by Domain (i.e. share info within your business)
The last one will be a feature of Zoho Business, currently in private Beta, but the other two are available. Thesaurus in 10 languages, format and layout improvements are all nice, but the real news of the day is the improved cross-application collaboration.
Related posts: TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Wired, Digital Inspiration, Zoho Blogs.
Tags: Collaboration, Google, google apps, google Groups, group sharing, microsoft, ms office, office 2.0, paperless office, web office, zoho, zoho writer
Ulteohhhhh…
Open Source, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups December 12th, 2007
Before I say anything, I want to prefix this post by stating that I am an Advisor to Zoho, which can be perceived as a competitor to Ulteo, the company that just announced providing OpenOffice On-Demand. That said, I often I’ve repeatedly stated my belief that we’re at a state of early expansion for Software as a Service, and for now, the more players the better. It’s not about slicing the pie yet, it’s about making sure the pie will be huge:
Summing it all up, I believe the winner of the “on-demand race” will not be Google, Zoho, or any of their competitors – the winners will be the customers who will have a lot more choice in picking the right business solutions later this year.
So I am happy to see new On-Demand offerings that work – and am royally p***ed when they don’t. I tried to use Ulteo, repeatedly. At the first attempt in the morning, I got stuck with a blank screen:

Next I tried in the evening: I spent a minute or so at the above blank screen, but finally I got some signs of life:
Oops… I don’t know of another instance, I don’t have Openoffice installed on this machine, and a Vista glitch forced me to reboot since my early morning attempt with Ulteo. And I certainly have no clue who the *** user u7670 is or how I should close Openoffice for this user on the Ulteo servers. But let’s click Yes to continue anyway:

Why am I in document recovery mode and just what is it I am about to recover? Finally, I got into this somewhat broken screen:

Not a very positive experience, if you ask me. On the other hand, it’s still more than the previous web-office “announcement”: Live Documents, which is still to materialize…some time next year.
Like I said, I am happy to see more On-Demand services. Those that actually exist, and perhaps even work.
Update: Jason Brooks at eWeek had similar experience.
Tags: Google, live documents, microsot, ms office, office 2.0, On-Demand, Open Source, openoffice, openoffice.org, SaaS, ulteo, web office, zoho
The Wait is Over – Zoho Show 2.0 is the Real Deal
Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME, Startups December 12th, 2007
If there’s one application where the benefits of collaborative creation, sharing, easy access from anywhere speak for themselves, that’s presentations. After all, we rarely create presentations to ourselves: it’s a one-to-many, or more typically few-to-many situation. But dealing with version
number 115 of the Sales Presentation, just figuring out which one is current, let alone contributing to it while someone else might be working on a different version is a nightmare – and when you’re ready to present, you’re still prone to accidents like this.
However, until now, we did not have a truly powerful online Presentation tool. Today (actually, on the weekend) it all changes: Zoho Show 2.0 is a truly PowerPoint-class application to collaboratively create, edit, show and share online presentations.
The user interface has been completely revamped, and you can start building your presentation by picking one of the 50+ default themes. You’ll find extensive support for shapes, clip-art, flow-charting, bullets and numbering. Images can be easily manipulated, rotated, flipped around.
Most presentations don’t start from scratch though (you had to get to version #155 somehow..), so
Zoho’s import facility is now significantly improved. I’ve tested it by importing several PPT decks that had suffered some deterioration in Show 1.0 – they come out perfectly in 2.0.
Show 2.0 now is a perfect online replacement for PowerPoint, except for transition effects, which are in the plans for Zoho. And that’s a comparison from a single user’s point of view. But again, presentations are rarely single-user projects… Zoho Show has built in Chat to facilitate work with your co-creators, and it also integrates Zoho Meeting, a full-blown conferencing, desktop-sharing application. Here’s Wired on the subject:
Given the slew of new features and slick interface, it makes more sense to compare Zoho to Powerpoint than other online competitors like Google. But even against desktop apps Zoho Show comes out a ahead in many areas — version control, sharing, online collaboration and ability to embed finished slideshows on your website are all features you won’t find in most desktop applications.
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll stop talking – here’s a Show 2.0 presentation instead:
There’s also a video, which I am not embedding, as my blog often chokes while waiting for Viddler…you can easily watch it here though.
Finally, that remark above about the weekend: this is not a pre-announcement, Zoho Show 2.0 is ready, I’ve played with it. However, the servers will be updated this weekend, as there may be some downtime involved, and the Zoho team is trying to minimize the inconvenience. Show 2.0 is expected to be available late Sunday.
Read more on: TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb, CenterNetworks , Mashable!, Between the Lines, Wired, Zoho Blogs
(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho)
Update (12/15): The update appears to be done, if you log in to your Zoho account, you’ll see Show 2.0. (Remember, the update was expected later during the weekend, I’ve just accidentally discovered it now, which does not mean it’s really complete – the Zoho team might very well be still tuning it.)
There are some amazing slideshows in the Public presentations area, like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this, just to pick a few.
Tags: Collaboration, microsoft, office 2.0, online presentations, powerpoint, ppt, presentations, web office, zoho, zoho show
(OK, I sinned. Mea Culpa. I’ve just cross-posted an entire article, which is not the best behavior. But it’s not every day that I
)
P.S. The CloudAve platform is not exactly in nice order yet. It’s work-in-progress. 




Zoli Erdos