Zoho News & Articles

CEO Sridhar Vembu of Zoho wrote an interesting article about why the Zoho suite is AJAX-rich as opposed to Flash-heavy. For those of you who still think AJAX killed the info-architect, it makes for nice reading.

Vembu prefaces the post by stating Flash is a great tool for other stuff (like ToonDoo, par exemple). But for the Zoho suite, the flexible nature of Javascript simply serves users better.

Ever feel the itch to edit a Zoho Writer doc while offline? Now you can.

“People want to take their online documents offline, and we’re going to make that experience as smooth and simple as possible,” gushes Zoho-vangelist Raju Vegesna. “Going forward, we’ll be extending offline read/write functionality to our other applications.”

Zoho’s suite of hosted office tools has been favorably (and endlessly) compared to Google Apps, its reining competitor au marché.

Catch the Zoho Offline editing demo.

Pagination and header/footer support were also brought to Zoho Writer just days ago.

Zoho has just released Creator Mobile, which enables users to access private or shared Zoho Creator files from their handhelds.

Creator Mobile currently supports IE, Opera, Safari, and WAP browsers. And while it may be fairly browser-agnostic, it’s pretty partial to the iPhone, aesthetics-wise.

Try the bad-boy out at the Zoho Creator Mobile subsite.

Seems like everyone is working to advance workflow these days. SpringCM is no exception.

A leader in on-demand document management and workflow, they’ve released SpringCM 4.0, which offers Advanced Workflow and business process management (BPM) capabilities.

Workshare, which operates mainly in secure content compliance, has just released its Enterprise Document Control Solution, which provides hosted services as well as clean integration with Microsoft Office.

The system enables content collaboration between enterprises, paired with tough security and an audit trail. (Good for eDiscovery risk management.)

Microsoft has announced Office Live Workspace (OLW), which is something like a SaaS version of SharePoint Light, only perhaps lighter than one might expect.

Office currently is taking a beating in the feisty SaaS sector, where Zoho, Google Apps and others are currently vying for marketshare. Even Adobe is getting into the game, having recently announced it would be acquiring the parent company of Buzzword, which provides Office-esque capabilities seamlessly between the Web and (eww!) non-Web worlds.

Microsoft just can’t get any peace. With Google Apps eroding the need to own a copy of Microsoft Office, and Zoho improving where Apps leaves off, the Word/Excel monopoly may be fast seeing sundown.

And the end may be sooner than expected, now that Adobe’s announced it’s going to purchase Virtual Ubiquity, the company that produces an offering called Buzzword.

Capgemini, based in France, will officially become the first top tech consultant to begin recommending Google’s office suite to corporate clients. The partnership was announced early today.

According to Forrester Research’s Ray Wong, Capgemini’s support will help Google gain street cred in the enterprise sector, where people are used to spending big dollars on cumbersome software.

Capgemini is a voice of influence for over 1 million personal computers in companies around the globe, according to CNN.

Google’s biggest competitor in serving SaaS-style office tools to businesses is Zoho, which plans to release Zoho Business at a cost US$ 10 lower than the search giant’s office suite.

So it’s finally happened: Zoho enters the enterprise at full speed with a new Suite feature called Zoho Business.

Zoho Start is a relatively new start page/integrated console that marries all Zoho apps in a single view. It currently works with Zoho Show, Writer and Sheet, with other apps to come.

Download Squad wryly writes, “Thanks Zoho, for making it extra difficult to choose between Zoho’s suite of applications, and Google’s Docs/Apps.” This isn’t the first time in recent months it’s done so. Less than a fortnight ago Zoho used Google Gears to bring its suite offline, something Google itself hasn’t opted to do.

That was neat. But unless you’re already a Zoho user, it’s hard to see how Zoho Start will draw Google Apps users into the Zoho camp.

Perhaps perceiving this, Center Networks thinks Zoho should go the extra mile and create a full start page, with the ability to include syndicated content.

Web office suite Zoho has announced it will be launching an offline component of its Zoho Writer offering, with other applications to follow over time.

Just when you thought the knowledge management space could not possibly get anymore crowded, Egnyte bursts into the market with a hybrid storage/collaboration/content management solution.

Joining Zimbra, Zoho and a web based office suite from a little ole Google; ShareMethods is the latest player in the effort to move the office suite from the desktop to the web.

You know the world has changed when the writing tools you lived by in grade school are referred to as “traditional.”

Inspired by the stodgy ol’ pen and paper notebook, AdventNet, Inc. adds Zoho Notebook to the Zoho suite of free offerings. It’s less now a notebook and more the blessed recipient of a Web 2.0 facelift with a fresh array of multi-media and online collaboration tools, and functionality fit for enterprises of today and grade schoolers of tomorrow.

The Zoho Office team has been consistently adding integrated products to its stellar AJAX Web Office Suite, and picking up some much deserved respect along the way. The latest this week is the Zoho Wiki.