The first major update to Zoho’s “operating system for business” in two years adds a shared email inbox, AR remote assistance tool, retail website creation platform, and more. Credit: Zoho Zoho has expanded its Zoho One business software suite to include more than 50 apps, adding a wide range of capabilities around analytics, security management, and employee experience. The vendor launched Zoho One in 2017 with the goal of providing access to a wider range of the applications across its extensive portfolio. The app suite costs $37 per employee per month when subscriptions are purchased annually for a customer’s entire workforce; otherwise annual subscriptions are $90 per user per month. On Tuesday, Zoho added a range of apps and services to the suite. Many of these are pre-existing Zoho apps that are available in Zoho One for the first time. This includes five apps covering employee experience, productivity, and data analytics: Zoho Learn, a learning management tool; TeamInbox, a shared email inbox; Zoho Lens, an augmented reality app that enables remote assistance; DataPrep, a self-service data preparation and management tool; and Zoho Commerce, which contains components for building a retail website, accept payments, and more. Zoho Zoho Lens, the company’s augmented reality app, is now included with the Zoho One platform. There are three new services within Zoho One: Org Dictionary, a central dictionary that aids consistent spellings of terms and employee names; Work Graph, which maps interactions between employees, resources, and systems; and a mobile application management (MAM) service for managing access on a range of devices. There are also several platform enhancements, including embedded, conversational analytics; natural-language-powered enterprise search; a unified view of apps, services, and dashboards for employees; and a customizable dashboard with pre-built widgets to provide visibility across the organization. Zoho said there are now 40,000 Zoho One customers, citing growth of 60% year-on-year during the pandemic, and up from 20,000 in 2019. Zoho Zoho One offers conversational BI capabilities throughout the platform, with more than 1,500 pre-built analytics reports and dashboards. For some businesses, Zoho’s comprehensive approach to its software suite — which includes sales, marketing, HR, and finance apps, as well as productivity tools — can offer an advantage over integrating multiple point solutions, according to Holger Mueller, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “Allowing enterprises to get rid of integration of best-of-breed products has always been a powerful point,” Mueller said. “As with all integrated suites, if the integration fits/works, it is great. If the functionality is not good enough, then there is integration work to do… but in general, Zoho has been above the ‘good enough’ limit consistently.” The expansion to Zoho One on Tuesday is the first major update to the suite since late 2019, when Zoho added a phone bridge system, a workflow management app, single sign-on, and a blockchain time-stamping feature for Zoho Sign. Related content news analysis OpenAI announces new multimodal desktop GPT with new voice and vision capabilities OpenAI announced what it says is a vastly superior large language model capable of interacting with human-like speeds using text, voice, and visual prompts. But at least one analyst said the company is just playing catch-up with competitors at this p By Lucas Mearian May 13, 2024 7 mins Generative AI Emerging Technology news Apple makes a deal to open iPhone to Generation GenAI The company is reportedly working on a deal with OpenAi's ChatGPT to bring generative AI to iPhone and Siri. By Jonny Evans May 13, 2024 4 mins iPhone Siri Apple news EC to include Teams as part of antitrust charges despite Microsoft concessions Unbundling the collaboration suite from Office was not enough to appease investigators, who continue to investigate anticompetitive practices by the tech giant. By Elizabeth Montalbano May 13, 2024 4 mins Regulation Microsoft Teams feature Windows 11 Insider Previews: What’s in the latest build? Get the latest info on new preview builds of Windows 11 as they roll out to Windows Insiders. Now updated for Preview Build 26120.470 for the Dev channel and Preview Build 22635.3575 for the Beta channel, both released on May 10, 2024. By Preston Gralla May 13, 2024 255 mins Small and Medium Business Microsoft Windows 11 Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe