Earlier, Zoho announced an integration with Google accounts (and Yahoo id) which was aimed at increasing product try outs.
Today, Zoho has launched Google apps integration that will enable you to login to Zoho using Google apps credentials.
Essentially, Zoho will show ‘Google Apps’ sign-in option and once user enter their Apps domain name, Zoho will redirect the user to Google to sign-in using your Google Apps credentials. Once you authorize accounts.zoho.com, you’ll be logged in to Zoho directly (source).
Threat to Google?
While Google Apps is an online office suite, Zoho has smartly positioned itself as a IT department for SMBs. Applications like Zoho marketplace, Zoho Business suite, HRMS certainly makes Zoho a good ‘try out’ option.
Do products live upto expectations?
What’s your take?
Well if Zoho reminds me of anything it is sheer persistence. They have been fighting with the big guys and have been carving out a niche for themselves in which they are getting more and more successful.
BTW for the past couple of posts I am noticing that the rendering in FF (3.5.2) is broken — the Google ads just below the title of the blog post are hiding over some of the initial text.
It displays fine on IE7 (actually IE8 + Compatibility Setting ON). Let me send across a couple of screenshots in an email.
Persistence certainly appears to be a hallmark. AdventNet, the parent company, is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA but has its main dev center out of Chennai. So it might well be the leitmotif for a successful “Indian” product company, a creature much talked about but with little hard evidence on the ground. For those who bemoan that the country remains a backyard for homegrown service companies that have grown big and fat with nary an innovation in sight, this is indeed uplifting. But the real characteristic of such companies is that they persist in developing a product to “put out there” and not start out with the assumption of becoming revenue or profit positive in short order.