Zoho Seems Hard at Work - SaaS Week

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March 10, 2008
Zoho Seems Hard at Work

Zoho's been busy lately. Last week they announced new mobile support for Zoho Writer on their blog and just today they also launched Zoho People, an app for HR management.

In Zoho's blog, Zoho's Raju Vegesna posts about Zoho People today, explaining that it has modules for organization, recruitment, forms, checklist, self service, and roles and permissions and he links graphics and videos that explain the application further.

I received some email responses from Vegesna last month about industry issues as a whole pertaining to SaaS after Vegesna had commented on expected functionality in Microsoft's Office 14.

What is your opinion of the claim that most SaaS MS Office alternatives are not ready for prime time? Are there instances where most companies truly do need something like MS Office?

Vegesna: The current versions of MS Office alternatives are not Enterprise ready. But they certainly are Business/SMB ready & consumer ready. It doesn't mean that they won't get there. These online offerings will be enterprise ready in a few years. Today we see departments in enterprises using online offerings. This will continue to grow and in a few years we will see enterprise deployments of these online apps. Even today we are seeing some early adopters implementing pilots in their enterprises. This will be a norm in a few years.

Do you think Microsoft will face increasing pressure to make a true SaaS version of Office as the other SaaS alternatives continue to mature and offer lower costs?  

Vegesna: Sure. They will face increasing pressure. I expect them to deliver some form of online offerings and of course I can foresee a price cut due to the pressure from online alternatives. 