Zoho launches unified communications platform, collaboration tech to boost digital functionality of businesses

By Onome Amuge

Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, recently unveiled its unified communications platform, known as Trident,as well as strengthened collaboration technologies to offer businesses easier ways to communicate across channels, reduce tool-ambiguity, and improve an organisation’s overall digital adoption.

Establishing itself as a central work hub or virtual headquarters, Zoho Workplace is a unified office platform that combines collaboration, productivity, and communications tools. It also operates as a flexible, full-featured business mail and cloud office suite that is built on a common data model and unified through search and AI, enabling users to operate collaboratively and seamlessly through applications.

Zoho, in a statement, noted that its Workplace has grown 30 per cent year-over-year with a rapidly expanding global user base of over 16 million, as it continues to revolutionise the way teams work together.

According to the technology company, headquartered in Chennai, India, Workplace is among the top five products in Nigeria where it has seen a growth of 106 per cent. It noted that there has been an increase in the number of migrations to Zoho from notable tech companies such as Namecheap. The predominant industries driving this trend, it pointed out,  are Finance, IT, FinTech, Retail, Non-IT Professional, Other Orgs and Services.

Zoho attributed the growth to increasing business demand for simplified, streamlined solutions that maintain utmost standards for user privacy as well as rising costs from other collaboration platform providers. Additionally, it emphasised that migrations from Google, Microsoft and GoDaddy to Zoho Workplace almost doubled in 2022 globally.

With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is recognised as one of the world’s most prolific technology companies and continues to enhance its suite of workplace products with new features aimed at improving collaboration, productivity, and communication. This can be seen with the  introduction of  Zoho Trident, its first native desktop app that unifies mail, messages, audio/video calls, calendar, tasks, and more in one place.

Furthermore, Zoho Voice, another innovative service, is now fully integrated within Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meeting, allowing employees to make direct line calls, send SMS messages, and pick up inbound calls across the apps.

In addition, Zoho Webinar within Zoho Meeting enables businesses to broadcast to thousands of attendees, engage with them using polls and Q&As, and present virtually without sharing their screen.

Zoho has also introduced BluePencil, an AI-based grammar tool with a text editor that can be used on any third-party webpage. The company explained that its universal drag and drop functionality saves time by letting users move files between products with a simple drag and drop.

With a focus on security, Zoho has added mobile device management capabilities and OTP-restricted emails to its workplace suite. Lastly, TrueSync has been added to Zoho Workdrive, removing hard drive storage limits and allowing users to access and make changes to their files locally and in the cloud.

Commenting on the continued innovation, Kehinde Seun Ogundare, country head, Zoho Nigeria, noted that In the past year, Zoho Workplace adoption has recorded significant acceleration as businesses of all sizes transition to digital-forward, hybrid work.

“With a clear focus on continued innovation, Zoho is well-positioned to thrive during this time of readjustment. The goal of Zoho Workplace is to enable businesses to unify their work to a point where the line between apps disappears. It is heartening to see so many new businesses join the Zoho family, using Zoho Workplace as their customizable center of gravity,” Ogundare added.

Dion Hinchcliffe, vice president  and principal analyst of Constellation Research, a technology research and advisory firm based in Silicon Valley, remarked that the new Zoho Workplace announcements show a deep commitment to creating choice in the digital productivity sector with a broad integrated suite that continues to innovate.

“The improvements to unified communications, the addition of high performance native functionality, improved security, and the addition of new AI capabilities keep Zoho Workplace in the uppermost echelon of productivity suites in my analysis. Zoho Workplace with its newest applications Trident, Webinar within Zoho Meetings and Phone systems within Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meetings is helping users do their jobs more efficiently and effectively,” Hinchcliffe said.

Zoho Workplace Pricing

Zoho Workplace is currently available in three editions per user and include:

-Standard edition which costs  ₦780 per month and is billed annually.

-Professional edition, with a charge of ₦1,560 per month which is billed annually.

-Zoho Mail, prices at ₦260 per month and  billed annually.

Regarding its privacy pledge, Zoho noted that it respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company also disclosed that it owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security for its over 80 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, who rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself.