Why we cooperate with Google

August 28, 2008 | By Sridhar

I explained earlier our rationale for why we compete with Google. From our forums today, here is a request for Google Apps integration with Zoho:

… I would like to have an app which will sync docs, spreadsheets, etc. with Google Apps and/or other providers. It will help convince users that they can move their data to the cloud and have a peace of mind …

Here is another request on GMail integration with Zoho CRM:

I will sound like an heresy to suggest. but we have become hooked on Gmail.

Salesforce and Gmail willl very shortly work together.

Is there a remote chance that Zoho and Gmail will work together ? of course the decision is more strategic in nature for Zoho than purely technical.

I wish that this post gets addressed from the Zoho developer team.

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So what’s in it for Zoho?

August 20, 2008 | By Sridhar

My last post on why we compete with Google attracted a bit of attention, and quite a few questions. Ignoring the questions on my IQ or my competence in English (isn’t the internet great?), let me come to the most central one of all: if business software is so much less lucrative than consumer internet offerings, why does Zoho want to be in it? To rephrase it, if the argument is that it won’t prove to be lucrative enough for Google, why does Zoho want to do it?

The pat answer, of course, is “Zoho is not Google”. The long answer is “AdventNet is not Google”, and what that means is you should understand our history. In a nutshell, for AdventNet, this market means moving up in the value chain, while for Google, it represents going down that value chain.

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Why We Compete with Google

August 18, 2008 | By Sridhar

How do you plan to compete with Google or why do you compete with Google? That is a question we get asked very often. It is better to ask why Google is interested in the business software market. Let me explain with a spreadsheet.

Focus on the revenue per employee and profit per employee metrics. I have grouped together the business software industry and the consumer internet industry separately. Notice how very successful companies with mature business models like Oracle or Intuit don’t even pull down half the revenue per employee of Google, and perhaps surprisingly, they pale in comparison with the supposedly struggling Yahoo. Ebay also towers over every software company except Microsoft. Finally, even Microsoft falls short of Google’s revenue/profit per employee metrics – and Google isn’t even milking a mature monopoly.

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WSJ Op-Ed: For Most People College is a Waste of Time

August 14, 2008 | By Sridhar

Knowing what we do with our own alternative to college in India, multiple people sent me this op-ed at the WSJ by Charles Murray For Most People College is a Waste of Time, asking for my opinion. Before I proceed, let me first state one thing clearly: the problems I have with Indian college education, which inspired our alternative, are of a different nature than the problems (I do have some!) I have with American college education. I have experience with both, and I believe the issues are fundamentally different.

Charles Murray mainly attacks the traditional (if that is the right word here) liberal arts component of American college experience:

Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance.

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How We Recruit – On Formal Credentials vs Experience-based Education

June 12, 2008 | By Sridhar

I was recently interviewed on Fox Business News. The anchor Liz Claman told me one of the things that interested them about Zoho/AdventNet is our recruitment model. It is a subject I am passionate about -in fact, I spend about as much time on it as our products or technology. After all, AdventNet has about 700 people, and we are hiring at a steadily increasing pace, so recruitment, motivation and retention are important topics for us.

I was talking to a partner at a successful venture capital firm a few weeks ago (no we are not raising money!), and the subject turned to recruitment. I told him we don’t really value fancy degrees and famous schools. He was surprised – perhaps because of my own educational background.

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IBM, Microsoft & Google Eras of Computing

May 2, 2008 | By Sridhar

By now it is conventional wisdom to say that there was an IBM Era of computing, then a Microsoft Era, and now we are in the Google Era. In this post, I will explain why Microsoft was not the “next IBM” and why Google is not the “next Microsoft” – there are significant qualitative differences among them, quite apart from their status as the dominant, era-defining players. Understanding that qualitative difference is crucial for third party vendors like Zoho to thrive. I was reminded of this because of the IBM/Google partnership unveiled today (via Dan Farber & see also Nick Carr). As an aside, I have coined a kind of Moore’s Law on these computing eras:

The dominant technology company in a generation reaches its pinnacle at about half the size of the dominant company in the previous generation, and it retains its dominance for half as long.

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Streaming Office vs True Web Apps

May 1, 2008 | By Sridhar

Randall Kennedy of ZDNet makes a bold prediction that streaming office will kill cloud based alternatives like Google Apps and Zoho. CenterNetworks has a somewhat different take. Let me first explain what is meant by streaming office: the server splits the code of an existing desktop application like MS Office into chunks, streams the code to the client as needed, which the client executes in a virtual machine layer. I would call it an “appletized application” (though there is no Java involved in this).

So is that model going to finish off web application suites like Zoho? Call me hopelessly biased or hopelessly delusional but I vehemently disagree (surprise!). Let me list some reasons.

1. One-time loading isn’t

Proponents of such systems always say “it is only a one time download”.

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