Watch Out Google Apps, Here Comes ZOHO Business
Google launched their white-label app service mid to late last year, for small businesses, schools and personal use. From that point onwards this has been quite a hit as many start-ups and families have started utilizing their services. I too use their services for my personal domain.
This is quite a nascent space where folks like Google are gaining some ground. Most of these services have been offered for free, however the small business editions are being offered for a premium.
Zoho on the other hand broke onto the scene early last year as one of the strong players in the web office space. Zoho has been a very aggressive company, frequently releasing new features to bring a 360 degree offering. Until now this has been seen as a play to offer cheap alternative to Microsoft Office. This offering however was labeled as a personal edition. Anyone could have registered and used their services for free.
Now they are making a pretty interesting move and enabling the business edition of this service, squarely aimed at start-ups and small businesses. Their goal is to become the IT department for small businesses. To this end they are bringing their online portfolio to a customizable white-labled offering. The portfolio contains the following features:
- Writer, Sheet, Show,
- Wiki, Planner, Notebook
- Chat, Mail, Calendar
- Start Page, Domain management
- more..
The aforementioned features will be packaged for the small businesses and can be deployed on their custom domains. ZOHO will offer following services to the businesses utilizing their services:
- Single sign on across applications
- Company level administration console
- Multiple levels of security including SSL
- Telephone support
- Remote back-up
- Document and data storage management self service
- Co-branding
This is a very strong move and their feature/service offering is much better than Google. ZOHO is currently in private beta and offering services selectively. Check out the video below from ZOHO.
I have applied for the beta and will post once I get to use it myself.
[…] Watch Out Google Apps, Here Comes ZOHO Business The aforementioned features will be packaged for the small businesses and can be deployed on their custom domains. ZOHO will offer following services to the businesses utilizing their services:. Single sign on across applications … […]
Not Related but:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/02/could-gpay-be-googles-killer-phone-app/
I tried out their project planner app and thought they took a feature rich approach at the expense of ease of use. I’m liking the very focused aproach of folks like 37signals with backpack. Certainly it doesn’t do everything that zoho does, but I found it easier to jump in and get started.
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Bill,
Yes ZOHO has been pretty aggressive in their feature launch. Their homepage itself tells the story. I am sure usability may have been overlooked.
To me it seems like their goal is to become a cheaper alternative to MS Office and now become the IT department of small companies. With this mind they have ensured that they bring the whole portfolio and now offer a way to install and run it for the smaller organizations.
They maybe successful with this approach with the businesses but will be challenged in the personal space.