Zoho unveils next-generation operating system

Chennai: Chennai-based software development company Zoho Corporation, on Thursday, launched the next generation of Zoho One, the operating system for businesses that is designed to run an entire organisation – from sales and marketing, finance and HR, to operations and business intelligence and more – all on a unified technology platform.

Zoho One is based on a new business workflow management application, 'Orchestly' – that lets customers effortlessly create, manage and optimise their business processes through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

Says Rajendran Dandapani, Zoho's Director of Technology, "The next-generation Zoho One platform comprises of features like PhoneBridge – a telephony platform, which integrates over 50 telephony vendors on one side and several Zoho applications on the other side. Single Sign-on (SSO) service which allows customers to integrate any third-party applications onto their Zoho account." "Zoho One currently enables provisioning for all over 45 Zoho apps. This is now being extended to custom apps created through Zoho Creator as well as external apps available through Zoho Marketplace. Zoho, third-party, custom, and SSO apps can be provisioned either individually to users or for groups using custom criteria," he added.

Talking about Orchestly, Rajendran said: "Using Orchestly, managers and administrators can automate and run their regular workflows, including cross-departmental ones such as purchase approvals, content publishing, asset management, and onboarding." The enhanced Zoho Sign now provides an additional level of verification for customers by adopting blockchain-based timestamping through Ethereum, the globally accepted open- source platform. Whenever a document is signed using Zoho Sign, an Ethereum transaction will happen in the background, to which the hash of the signed document will be added to the transaction. Zoho currently employs 8,000 employees globally and has a user base of 45 million spread across 180 countries with more than 1,500 partners. Launched in 2017 for the first time, Zoho One is priced at Rs 1,500 per employee or Rs 3,000 per user and offers more than 45 applications for the benefit of the user.