Success of Online Business Apps Positions Company as IT Department for SMBs
PLEASANTON, Calif. (August 06, 2008) –
Zoho today announced that Dean Detton, founder of Prestige Home Automation, is the company’s one millionth user. The news validates Zoho’s user-driven success and the increasingly influential role the company plays in defining the dynamics of the online business application market.
To celebrate its millionth user, Zoho will be hosting a party on September 4, 2008, during the Office 2.0 Conference being held September 3-5, 2008, at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco. All Zoho users are invited to attend. Please visit http://blogs.zoho.com prior to September 4 for more details, including the party venue.
“We want to be the IT department for small and medium businesses,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “Judging by the rapid growth of our user population, that vision resonates with the SMB customers like Prestige Home Automation who are adopting our online business applications and collaborative productivity applications.”
Prestige Home Automation perfectly reflects Zoho’s SMB target market. Detton’s three-person company plans to use Zoho CRM for inventory management, purchase orders, and tracking all leads and customer interactions. Besides functionality, cost and time to implement the Zoho online business application were key criteria for Detton.
“Running a small company, I have limited bandwidth,” said Detton. “If I have to spend a lot of time implementing software, that takes time away from selling and implementing products, which is my business. I don’t earn anything when I’m implementing software for internal use.”
Zoho’s Million User Milestone
With few online business application vendors reaching the million user milestone, Zoho’s achievement confirms the viability and vitality of this market. It also reflects the accelerating demand for Zoho. The company reached its first 100,000 users in 12 months, its second 100,000 users in six months, and its third 100,000 users in four months. Zoho added its last 700,000 users in the last 12 months.
As Yankee Group, The 451 Group, and CIO have recently discussed, a key differentiating point for Zoho is the breadth and depth of its online suite. Zoho is the only company to offer its users a wide array of collaborative productivity applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs as well as business-specific applications for CRM, invoicing, human resource management, and other business services. In fact, 10 percent of Zoho users use Zoho CRM, and the average size of the companies using Zoho CRM has grown from 5 to 20 employees.
Zoho has also distinguished itself by integrating its applications under a single sign-on as well as providing integrations between applications.
Vegesna continued, “Users want single sign-on. The power of single sign-on is often underestimated. When all the apps your business needs are available under single sign-on and well integrated, it is powerful. That is what we intend to bring to the table.”
As Zoho’s user base continues to grow, so do the accolades from industry watchers. Zoho has been named a Hot Company to Watch in 2008 by Forrester and a Cool Vendor in Web 2.0, 2007 by Gartner. To date, the company’s numerous awards include the following:
* “100 Best Products of 2008” from PC World
* “25 Most Innovative Products” 2008 for Zoho Notebook from PC World
* “Best Enterprise Start-up” at The 2007 Crunchies
* 2008 “Webware 100” award for productivity
For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com. To get breaking Zoho news, please visit and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://blogs.zoho.com/.
About Zoho and AdventNet
Zoho is creating the most comprehensive suite of affordable, online collaborative productivity applications and business applications for today’s knowledge workers. To date, Zoho has launched 16 different applications and more are in the works. Zoho has received numerous awards including a 2008 PC WORLD 25 Most Innovative Products Award for Zoho Notebook and “Best Enterprise Start-up” at The 2007 Crunchies. Nearly 200 developers work on the Zoho suite. For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com and blogs.zoho.com.
Zoho is a division of AdventNet, in business since 1996 providing innovative software products and serving more than 25,000 customers worldwide. For more information on AdventNet, please visit www.adventnet.com.
Media Contact:
Susan D’Elia
TECHMarket Communications
(650) 344-1260
Susan@TECHMarket.com
Source: Zoho