As CloudContacts grows, I’ve been spending bits of time researching online helpdesk solutions. I’ve also had several discussions with a friend who is also looking for the same solution for his customer service and support inquiries. One of the first items for discussion is whether we want a locally-installed service or a cloud-based service.

Zoho has announced the release of their cloud-based help desk solution, Zoho Support. I’ve been a fan of Zoho products from the beginning (even if they don’t include CN on their blogroll). Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna was one of my first interviews after I launched CN in late 2006.

Zoho Support is setup much like other help desk software providers. The system can be used when customers call in via the phone, email or web form. The Zoho Support service offers several feature categories: ticketing, reporting, tasks and an account manager for handling each customer and their SLAs). The reporting element of any help desk software might be the most important – the ability to group, categorize and monitor the types of support tickets is critical for any business. I think of the reporting section as the business improvement section.

The other half of of Zoho Support is the knowledgebase which allows support representatives to quickly access the best and most helpful responses to support tickets. One nice feature is that portions of the knowledgebase can be exposed externally so customers can find answers before submitting a support ticket.

Zoho offers a free Support account which allows for 25 tickets per day for one agent and no knowledge base access. Paid accounts start at $12/agent/month and include the full feature set. Since we would have one “agent” to begin with, our cost would be $12/month. Zoho has also setup “Express” packages which are geared toward small businesses that don’t have a dedicated support department. These packages start at $24/month with unlimited agents and 25 total tickets per day. It looks like the Express packages do not include the knowledgebase.

Juan Carlos Perez from PC World has more on the Zoho Support launch. Here is Zoho’s one-minute demo video of Zoho Support:

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The post below was authored by Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

The title provides a short answer to the question: Why do we integrate with Google Apps? An important emerging theme in cloud applications is the one-page or to be more accurate the one-browser-tab approach to design – i.e contextual integration of information across applications, so that whichever app the user happens to be, it pulls relevant information from other apps, and displays it in the right context. In the traditional desktop and client-server world, data is slave to the application that created it. In the cloud, data is liberated so it can contextually go where it is the best fit. We have used this as our architectural blueprint in Zoho, as we integrate Zoho services with each other (such as our CRM & Email integration), as well as in integrating Zoho with third parties.

Take the Google Apps marketplace announcement yesterday. At that event, there were plenty of demonstrations on how contextual integration works across vendors. Notable ones include Intuit Online Payroll integration with Google Calendar, Atlassian Jira.com integration with GMail/Docs/GTalk, and of course our own Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects integration with GMail/Docs. It is fair to say that every single case of integration demonstrated at the launch even yesterday takes the cloud based ecosystem functionality ahead of where traditional enterprise systems are capable of today. Even more important, we completed our integration with Google in under 2 months, even while they were still refining their APIs. We thank the Google team once again for inviting us to be a launch partner.

Why do we want to integrate with Google Apps? The most important browser tab, in a business context, is the one dedicated to email. Given that GMail is the cloud email provider of choice by far, it is natural for Zoho to integrate our suite with GMail and Google Apps. While we agree with Marc Benioff on enterprise apps taking design inspiration from Facebook (well, not too much inspiration, we are not sure we want to go around “poking” our customers!), we would also like to point out that email is where the majority of business users spend their time. Of course, given that Salesforce has no email strategy, it is natural for them to try to redefine the market away from email and towards social networking. This is Salesforce’s third attempt at making their CRM a business app platform, but unfortunately for them, email is a far more natural starting point than CRM – we say that as a company that has a strong CRM suite. Besides, to be a real platform, you have to have a degree of openness, and our experience with Salesforce demonstrates the opposite, and sets up a direct contrast to Google’s platform approach.

Now, what exactly is contextual integration? In a nutshell, contextual integration allows for the most relevant information to surface up to the user, regardless of where that information is stored. For years, if you wanted to get information on customers, you had to go to your CRM system. If you wanted to get information on employees, you had to go to your HRIS system, if you wanted to read email, you went to your email client.

The cloud is going to fundamentally change that. With contextual integration, everything comes together – emails, calendars, documents, CRM systems, project management, HR, accounting, all of it – all from within one single tab. In this new vision, application boundaries become fluid, in fact applications in the traditional sense take the back seat, and the user’s workflow and context dominate. The benefits are enormous, both for individual business users, as well as for IT organizations. Individual users can get more done faster, with tools that get out of their way. IT organizations reap enormous productivity gains in systems integration.

That second point, systems integration, is an important one. The vast majority of IT spending goes to systems integration/professional services. It is well known in the industry that in the old software model, licensing costs represent only 20-30% of the initial cost. But in the SaaS world, we are already seeing how much easier it is to share data among different, disparate systems. This of course, doesn’t mean that system integration costs will entirely go away. In particular, enterprise customers will still need to hire professional services to connect cloud services to their more intricate, legacy systems they still have in-house. While they might not go away, we fully expect them to substantially decrease. Small and Mid-size customers will even be able to do away with them, as cloud vendors are increasingly pre-integrating each other’s systems.

I will acknowledge that contextual integration is still in its infancy, but we (by which I mean the entire cloud ecosystem) are making rapid progress. The important thing to note about cloud applications is that, in the beginning, they were just about replicating the desktop experience. Want an email program? I’ll give you one, but instead of on a desktop client, on the web. That was step one. Step two was about improving some of the features that the desktop application provided: more storage, better scalability, better security, etc. But now cloud applications go far beyond that. Contextual integration is an example of how cloud applications – Zoho’s and everyone else’s – are bringing a whole new wave of productivity and innovation.

Sridhar Vembu is CEO of ZOHO Corp. Learn more about Zoho, a comprehensive suite of award-winning online productivity, collaboration and business applications for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as consumers, at http://www.zoho.com and the Zoho blog, http://blogs.zoho.com/. Follow the company on Twitter at @zoho.

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Over the past week online office provider Zoho has had a bit of fun leading up to announcing their new product launch. First they teased us with a riddle, then they posted a tetris-style image of the new service. Today they have announced that the new product is Zoho Projects 2.0.

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:

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This weekend Online office and tools provider Zoho announced that they are launching a new product this week. They didn’t provide any details except a mad libs comment. Today they posted a bit more about the upcoming launch.

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.

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Some startups give exclusives (sadly)… some startups go with embargoes… some startups just go. Online office and tools provider Zoho has announced that they will be launching “something” this week. They promise that the launch will happen before July 4th.

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.

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Last year online office provider Zoho partnered with Baihui and entered the Chinese market and they also partnered with Swisscom in Europe. Last week Zoho announced a new distribution deal with NTT in Japan. The Zoho distribution is part of a bigger effort by NTT to create a cloud environment. The cloud platform is named “Setten”, the Japanese word for “contact point” or “interface.”

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.

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The post below was originally posted on the Zoho blog and is authored by Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

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!

Find more stories about: Google, Google Wave, Microsoft, Zoho

Online office suite provider Zoho has announced the launch of Zoho Mobile today. Zoho Mobile works on the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian S60 devices. The supported Zoho applications include Mail, Writer, Calendar, Sheet, Show and Creator.

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.

Find more stories about: mobile, Office, startups, Zoho

Online office suite provider Zoho has announced the launch of Zoho Gadgets today. Widgets are available for: Zoho Docs, Zoho Mail, Zoho Calendar, Zoho Tasks, Zoho Contacts and Zoho Planner. Zoho Gadgets will also work on any OpenSocial-compatible social network. The suite of Zoho widgets will also work on Facebook and Gmail.

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.

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Zoho has announced that they now support app deployment to Google AppEngine today. Basically what this means is that if you create an application in Zoho Creator, you can now quickly deploy it to Google AppEngine which will allow for more discovery and potentially up the take rate for the app.

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:

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Office suite provider Zoho is announcing the launch of Zoho Marketplace this morning. The Zoho Marketplace brings together Zoho users and Zoho application developers and allows users to install applications that will aid in user effectiveness. The marketplace is similar to other developer offerings by Facebook, MySpace and OpenSocial.

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:

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Online office suite provider Zoho has announced the launch of Zoho Docs this morning. You can think of Zoho Docs as a set of folders which help keep your documents neatly organized within the Zoho platform. Zoho applications are supported in Zoho Docs and they have also built the ability to upload other documents. Groups are supported which allow multiple people to keep track of documents in folders. Zoho Chat is also available so you can chat with others in your Zoho buddy list directly from Zoho Docs.

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.

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Office suite provider Zoho is announcing the launch of recordable macros in their Zoho Sheet application today. Basically creating a macro is as easy as clicking the start button, completing the actions you desire, and then clicking the stop button. Zoho then creates the Visual Basic code which you can pick up and modify as you like. The macro can then be applied to other spreadsheets.

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.

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Project management software provider Wrike has announced the launch of their enterprise version today. The biggest update in this new version is the ability to reschedule tasks easily by using task dependencies. This allows you to change a top task and all sub-tasks will follow suit. If you’ve worked with project management software, rescheduling can be a real pain.

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.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, Office, Quick News, Wrike, Zoho

Office suite provider Zoho has signed a 6-month trial partnership with Swiss telco provider Swisscom. The partnership will bring Zoho products Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook and Meeting to a custom version of the Zoho Business suite. The tools will be available within the Swisscom Teamnet portal. Swisscom currently has over 300,000 business customers.

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.

Find more stories about: Europe, Office, Quick News, Zoho