Zoho unveils Trident unified communications platform for the enterprise

Zoho is moving its Trident unified communications suite out of a private beta program and into public availability, marking the public launch of the company’s first native applications for that category of software.

Trident, according to the company, is designed to be a central communications and organizational hub for an organization’s workers to access email, instant messaging, phone and video calls, and perform task management and scheduling.

The level of integration is high, providing search capabilities across the entire suite — with the idea being to release workers from the responsibility of searching through mail, messaging and other apps individually — and a voice service that works across its Cliq collaboration app, Zoho Meeting conferencing, and even direct phone calls and SMS messages.

Universal drag-and-drop is another feature, letting users throw email attachments directly to colleagues via the messaging app, as well as what the company bills as an AI-based grammar tool called BluePencil, which offers writing suggestions and corrections across the platform.

Valoir analyst and CEO Rebecca Wetteman said that the centralization of the company’s products is the main value-add from today’s announcement, given the deluge of new communications options that debuted during the worst of the pandemic.

“There are an awful lot of vendors out there that are about connecting employees in various ways,” she said. “What Zoho has, within the collaboration application, is ways to connect and be engaged, for HR to talk to employees, and so on, without adding one more portal.”

It’s simply a more efficient method of approaching the communications and organization issues, Wetteman said, noting that the Zoho approach cuts out a significant amount of administrative work, password management, and general swapping between systems for workers.

Zoho’s Trident has stiff competition, of course, in the form of Microsoft and Google, in particular. But it may have an important leg up on both of those companies, in the form of lower costs — the most expensive “Professional” service plan costs $6 per user per month, and includes every feature on the platform, 100GB of mail storage and the same amount of shared drive space. Fees for the 10GB tier, with fewer features, drop to $3 per monthly user, and there’s a mail-only tier available for $1 per monthly user.

Zoho’s new Trident product is available now, in public beta. The company currently offers Windows and MacOS versions of the client application, and mobile apps are currently in development.