The idea is that this new version adds a “social layer” to the more traditional project management tools. Zoho notes on the Projects 2.0 release, “Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional ‘project management’ space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal. It’s not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It’s about how people interact and what they need while working on something – whether it’s a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one.”

I love this line, “Many times when we hear ‘Project’ he instantly think of a PMI-certified guy with a huge Gantt chart taped in his office door. But every team is always working in some sort of project, whether that’s formally defined or not. And that is where Zoho Projects helps.” Gosh I miss those corporate America Gantt charts each and every day!

Krishnan Subramanian at Cloudave has a great writeup of the Zoho Projects 2.0 launch. Here’s a short video describing the new product:

What we know as of tonight:

• The new service will incorporate at least 5 of the current Zoho apps
• The new service will integrate with a popular Microsoft product (it’s not sharepoint)

I would like to caution other startups before they try this “peek-a-day” launch method. It works for Zoho because they are huge and well respected. It’s not something I would suggest any startup use as a launch strategy.

Here’s a screenshot of what the app will look like using Tetris-vision:

So leave your ideas in the comments. It looks like there will be some nav bar across the top (blue) and some sort of menu or widgets on the left (brown). It’s probably not Zoho-Flight Simulator.

This is all we have to go on from the blog post:

“We also promise you will really really like this new shiny thing. It will change the way you  _________ (can’t tell you that just yet, as it’d give it away). In fact, we challenge you to try out Zoho _________ for a month, and then you’ll wonder how you worked without it before.”

Leave your thoughts in the comments on what Zoho will be launching. The ideas on the Zoho thread include a Zoho toolbar for Firefox, Zoho Store, new reports implementation and complete online and offline functionality for all Zoho tools. There was another idea that it’s the launch of Zoho Cheeseburgers but that was denied quickly as apparently Zoho doesn’t want to get Grimace mad.

NTT notes regarding the new Setten offering, “The platform will provide operating systems, storage and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, including AdventNet K.K.’s Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, Zoho Mail and NTT Resonant’s Business goo.”

Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna explains how the cloud portion will work for Zoho’s apps, “Interesting part to notice in this case is that the Zoho Applications are not served from Zoho’s data centers in US. Instead, Zoho applications are deployed in NTT Com’s data centers. Zoho provides frequent updates to these applications.”

The Setten release will start small with 15 Japanese companies and will expand over time.

Inevitable comparisons are made between the hugely enthusiastic developer response (including from us at Zoho) to Google Wave yesterday with the relatively tepid reponse to Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. The real interesting contrast to us, as independent software developers, is the way developers responded to Silverlight as opposed to the reaction yesterday to Google Wave. Both Silverlight and Wave are aimed at taking the internet experience to the next level. To be perfectly honest, Silverlight is a great piece of technology. Google Wave, as yet, is not much more than a concept and an announcement.

It is easy to dismiss all this with “Oh, the press just loves to hype everything Google, and loves to hate Microsoft,” but that cannot explain why even competitors like us are willing to embrace Google’s innovations, but stay away from perfectly good innovations from Microsoft, such as Silverlight?

It comes down to one word: karma. Microsoft just has so much bad karma in this industry that I cannot imagine a company like us trusting them on much of anything. Take Silverlight: Microsoft pledged that they will always support Silverlight on Mac and Linux, and on browsers other than IE. Do you really, really believe their promise? Let’s recap some ancient history here: Microsoft used to have IE for Solaris and even had a beta of IE for Linux. That was when IE was way behind Netscape and was trying to catch up. Once Netscape was safely vanquished, Microsoft’s commitment to support IE on other platforms vanished. In fact, Microsoft intentionally pulled IE on other platforms, because it was clear to them that making the web experience suck on other platforms was a way to keep Windows firmly entrenched. I am glad they adopted that strategy, because that strategy eventually paved the way for Firefox (and Safari and Chrome …), and together those browsers have rendered the operating system utterly irrelevant. Apple’s resurgence – based on design prowess, not platform dominance – and Vista’s failure, have demonstrated that convincingly.

Let’s try to imagine what a Google Silverlight would have been. It would have been a fully open source product from Google, with a very liberal open source license (BSD or Apache). It would have all the technical specifications published openly. They would pledge to have the Silverlight VM interoperate with Javascript and HTML5. And a company like Zoho would have a ton of developers working on Google Silverlight based applications by now – as opposed to having exactly ZERO developers working on Microsoft Silverlight. Please note that this has nothing to do with the technology: as I said before, I happen to agree that Silverlight is a great piece of technology.

What could Microsoft do to earn our trust? For starters, they could really support all the web standards on IE. IE is increasingly an embarrassment of a browser and a pain for developers to support. The only reason IE is making any progress at all is the competition from Firefox and Safari and Chrome. I know, IE was once known for web innovation, including AJAX – but that was the time Microsoft was really trying to catch up and beat Netscape. Fair or not, the impression independent developers get is that Microsoft would prefer the web to stay crippled, so pesky applications that challenge their cash cows can stay frozen as “online Wordpad”, as Bill Gates put it.

That brings us back to Google: today, it is Google which is driving web standards forward. That is why we at Zoho are firmly aligned with them, even if they are our primary competitor. We believe in an open web, there is plenty of opportunity for all of us. Could Google abuse its position? Well, I am sure they understand karma!

Zoho notes regarding the launch, “we are announcing the unified mobile initiative that integrates Zoho Application under a consistent user interface.” The apps are also available in Japanese with more languages coming soon.

The Zoho Mobile apps appear to be free to download and use. Frankly I think Zoho could have charged for mobile access to help offset the development costs.

Earlier this month Zoho launched Zoho Gadgets and easy connections to Google AppEngine.

The widgets will allow Zoho users to stay current with their content even when not actually on the Zoho site.

Zoho has also created a generic embed which will basically work anywhere – meaning you can embed your Zoho apps into your blog or website. It’s a smart move for Zoho because it will potentially provide them with free marketing via their users pushing out the widgets.

Zoho

Zoho notes that it takes only three steps to get an app onto Google AppEngine. First the application must be created in Zoho Creator. Next the developer must create a "placeholder" in Google AppEngine. Last, the developer deploys the application from Zoho Creator to Google AppEngine. The big benefit is that Zoho Creator takes care of writing the Python code for Google. Currently Google only supports the Python language on AppEngine.

Zoho self-reports 130,000 applications have been built using Zoho Creator. Back in September, Zoho launched an app marketplace and I assume today’s AppEngine announcement is an extension of Zoho’s desire to get apps discovered.

Here’s an overview from Zoho on how the Google AppEngine deployment works:

Applications are built in Zoho Creator and the company notes that to-date over 100,000 applications have been built using the platform. Developers decide whether to charge a fee for their applications or provide them for free.

What makes the Zoho Marketplace interesting is that as a Zoho customer you can place a request for an application. My guess is that any application request will see action from developers on the Zoho network. Check out all of our Zoho coverage including why we think they are a great fit for IBM.

Here’s a cute overview of how the Zoho Marketplace works:

This may seem like a small announcement but it could have large implications in Zoho’s ability to cross-promote their applications. Get users using the Zoho tools as a file explorer replacement and it can help cross-sell other Zoho services. This app screams for a desktop where a toolbar could sit on the desktop at all times to allow for super-fast document retrieval.

Check out all of our Zoho coverage, including our interview with Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna.

Here’s a video overview showing how to create a macro in Zoho Sheet:

In a chat with Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna, he said outside of Microsoft Excel, Zoho Sheet is the only product to auto-generate Visual Basic code based on user actions. Earlier this year Zoho Sheet added support for pivot tables. And check out our interview with Raju to learn more about Zoho.

Wrike’s enterprise version offers exporting and importing options into Microsoft Office applications. Wrike is priced at $15 per user with unlimited projects.

While Wrike compares themselves to Microsoft Office, I’d suggest a more accurate comparison is with other SaaS/hosted project management tools including Zoho Projects. Zoho Projects is capped at $80/month for unlimited projects and unlimited users. With Zoho offering a full office suite of tools, my initial take is based on looking at the suite and pricing, Zoho seems like a better choice. Though both tools offer robust solutions that appear more attractive than Microsoft Project.

Zoho reports that their userbase is 50% US, 25% European and 25% in the rest of the world. This past April, Zoho partnered with Badhui in China. Back in March, the Telegraph newspaper out of the U.K. voted Zoho as one of the 101 websites they couldn’t live without.

Zoho

The macro functionality is based on Visual Basic and Zoho Sheet is the first online spreadsheet application that understands Visual Basic macros. This moves the application into the advanced functionality realm.

Could the ability to tie into Visual Basic macros allow Zoho to access a Microsoft Office backend?

Pivot tables were recently added to Zoho DB and they have brought the same functionality over to Zoho Sheet. Evangelist Raju Vegsna tells me that now you can import 100,000 rows in a CSV document.

Check out the video below for all of the new features and here’s the company blog post describing all of the new features.

editor’s note: Zoho is a current CN sponsor.

Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna provided some additional information about Baihui, "Baihui’s parent company, PC Stars is the largest online distributor in China with more than 2400 resellers and over 1000 system integrators." 

Zoho continues to increase their product offering, both in features and languages. Earlier this month Zoho launched their enterprise CRM product and the Telegraph newspaper named Zoho as one of the 101 most useful web sites. I’m wondering if a partnership with Dell might make sense — get icons for Zoho’s products right on the desktop from the initial launch and push them as a value add on system purchases — might be a good move for additional distribution.

Editor’s note: Zoho is a current CN sponsor.