Zoho Business

I joked with Raju Vegesna of Zoho last night at the Office 2.0 kickoff party that they must have 500 programmers to generate all the products they have. He replied, "No, only 150." A hundred and fifty programmers? My god, and no revenue model, I thought.

Well today the revenue model comes into sharp focus with the announcement of Zoho Business:

[via email]

Zoho Personal is what we offer today for individuals. As we said previously, our applications will continue to remain free for individuals.

Zoho Business (ZB) is the new category we are launching and it is aimed at small & mid-sized businesses. ZB will be available in two versions - Free & Pro. Below are some of the highlights of Zoho Business.

* Company level Admin Console
* Domain Management (for pointing your domains to Zoho Apps)
* Centralized User and Group Management
* Single Sign-on across several Zoho Apps
* Zoho Apps include Writer, Sheet, Show, Wiki, Notebook, Email, Cal, Tasks, Planner, Viewer, Chat etc.
* Customization Options
* Multiple levels of Security including SSL
* Remote Backup
* Telephone Support and more.

ZB will be available in Private Beta now and it'll step into Public Beta next month. We are aiming for the GA release during the first quarter for next year. The pricing for ZB (while not finalized) will be around $40/user/year.

If you are targeting Google -- the obvious competitor, although lacking many of the tools that Zoho has rolled out -- you have to have at least 150 developers, I guess. If this enterprise offering takes off, I bet they will be hiring even more.

Comments

[Dan Johnson]

I like it