Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, talks about how Salesforce is all for sweetness and love and openness and all the good things. As VentureBeat reports:

Comparing Microsoft and Salesforce, Benioff said: “They hate everybody and we love everybody, and that’s pretty much the difference. We even love Microsoft. … This is our core strategy, love.”

Now, where do I begin? As I have recounted elsewhere, our dalliance with Salesforce began with their invitation to us to take part in their AppExchange (now renamed Force.com) ecosystem. They said they knew we had a CRM offering of our own, but still felt our online office suite would be a good addition to their ecosystem. We assigned an engineering team to do the integration, had a bunch of meetings and calls with their technical team, and with their full support, we completed the integration work. It was literally days from launch when we got the call: the VP in charge of AppExchange told us the project was on hold and  Benioff would be calling me.

That's when I got the full measure of the man: Benioff told me he could not permit us to play on the AppExchange as things stood, but he would be happy to acquire us. We had several rounds of meetings on this,  finally I told him I really don't see any cultural compatibility between the companies. He changed tack and repeatedly tried to get us to discontinue Zoho CRM, in return we would get to play on AppExchange. I was furious because both Benioff and his team clearly knew we had a CRM offering going into this engagement, and if they had set this as a pre-condition for us to integrate into AppExchange, we would never have put in the resources we did.

Since then, Salesforce has repeatedly tried to block customers from migrating to Zoho CRM, by telling them (falsely) that they cannot take their data out of Salesforce until their contract duration is over. We have emails from customers recounting this.

Now, realize that we face a far, far bigger competitor in Google, and yet we have nothing but praise for the way they have worked with us. In the grand scheme of things, we are not going to be killed by Salesforce, that's for sure. I have no personal animosity - even today, we would integrate Zoho into Force.com if they would let us, because that would benefit our customers and theirs - but when I read an interview where he blatantly spins a story starkly in condradiction to reality I have personal knowledge of, I have to call him on it.

In an article about Microsoft's announcement-of-an-announcement regarding its web-based Office offering, Anita Hamilton writes about Zoho and quotes our Raju Vegesna. Excerpts :

"I think it's about time the Office suite is free," says Zoho's tech evangelist Raju Vegesna. "We paid $500 for an Office suite when the price of the hardware was $5,000. Now the price of the hardware has come down to $500, and it doesn't really make any sense for a piece of software to cost $500."

For most users, however, free Web apps are really all you need. And they're getting better all the time. Zoho has spreadsheet, word-processing, presentation and organizing programs, and lets you work both online and off; it even has an iPhone app.

Before you pay even the lowest price for Microsoft Office, give Zoho or Google Docs a try. They aren't confusing, and they won't make you feel stupid. To make absolutely sure, I became my own guinea pig. I typed this story in Zoho Writer, even though I had never even tried it until this week.

Thanks to Anita & TIME.

The outcome will be determined not only by whether Microsoft will be able to maintain its dominance of the Office market but also by whether it can maintain the outsized revenues and profits it has long enjoyed in that market.

A better way to explain this is obviously with a toon...

Today Microsoft launched its Azure cloud platform, so it is time for another spreadsheet. To properly compare Microsoft, Google & Amazon, I am using the gross profit (instead of revenue) and net profit numbers. Gross profit is in some sense the real revenue of a company after paying its outside suppliers; gross profit is what is available to pay its employees, pay the rent and so on. For a software company, the cost of goods sold is close to zero, so most of the revenue is gross profit. But for a retailer, as much as 70-80% of revenue goes to its suppliers, so gross profit is the better measure of the economic productivity the company achieves. The numbers below use rough annualized estimates based on the most recent quarter.

Do you notice the dramatic difference? Google and Microsoft are in another planet altogether compared to Amazon. Google has practically the same headcount as Amazon, yet drives three times the gross profit. The numbers really illustrate Amazon's competitive strategy in cloud computing; to quote Nick Carr:

Bezos goes on to note that Amazon's retailing operation is "a low gross margin business" compared to software and technology businesses, which "tend to have very high margins." The relatively low profitability of the retailing business gave Amazon the incentive to create a highly efficient, highly automated computing system, which in turn could become the foundation for a set of cloud computing services that could be sold at low enough prices to attract a large clientele. It also made a low-margin utility business attractive to the firm in a way that it isn't for a lot of large tech companies who are averse to making big capital investments in new, low-margin businesses.

"On the surface, superficially, [cloud computing] appears to be very different [from our retailing business]," Bezos sums up. "But the fact is we've been running a web-scale application for a long time, and we needed to build this set of infrastructure web services just to be able to manage our own internal house."

Microsoft's announcement is interesting from a technology point of view, but it is hard to see how the economics would work for them against Amazon. It is very hard for companies to go down the value chain for growth, so I am skeptical Microsoft would easily accept Amazon-like margins. On the other hand, for Amazon, cloud services have to deliver only a little higher margin than retail to be well worth the investment. That is not a tough hurdle, because retail is one of the toughest businesses out there.

It is time for another spreadsheet. To properly compare Microsoft, Google & Amazon, I am using the gross profit (instead of revenue) and net profit numbers. Gross profit is in some sense the real revenue of a company after paying its outside suppliers;  gross profit is what is available to pay its employees, pay the rent and so on. For a software company, the cost of goods sold is close to zero, so most of the revenue is gross profit. But for a retailer, as much as 70-80% of revenue goes to its suppliers, so gross profit is the better measure of the economic productivity the company achieves. The numbers below use rough annualized estimates based on the most recent quarter.

Do you notice the dramatic difference? Google and Microsoft are in another planet altogether compared to Amazon. The numbers really illustrate Amazon's competitive strategy, to quote Nick Carr:

Bezos goes on to note that Amazon's retailing operation is "a low gross margin business" compared to software and technology businesses, which "tend to have very high margins." The relatively low profitability of the retailing business gave Amazon the incentive to create a highly efficient, highly automated computing system, which in turn could become the foundation for a set of cloud computing services that could be sold at low enough prices to attract a large clientele. It also made a low-margin utility business attractive to the firm in a way that it isn't for a lot of large tech companies who are averse to making big capital investments in new, low-margin businesses.

"On the surface, superficially, [cloud computing] appears to be very different [from our retailing business]," Bezos sums up. "But the fact is we've been running a web-scale application for a long time, and we needed to build this set of infrastructure web services just to be able to manage our own internal house."

Microsoft's announcement is interesting from a technology point of view, but it is hard to see how the economics would work for them against Amazon. It is very hard for companies to go down the value chain for growth, so I am skeptical Microsoft would accept Amazon-like margins gladly.

You might recall the Beijing Olympics 2008 Dashboard that we did recently using Zoho DB & Reports, which was well received. Coming to know about Zoho DB & Reports through this Dashboard, we were contacted by the Official website hosting partner of Commonwealth Youth Games 2008, which is currently being held in Pune, India between 12th-18th October 2008.

They offered us the opportunity to host the Official Reports and Statistics of the Youth Commonwealth Games 2008 in their Website using Zoho DB & Reports. We readily accepted the invitation and worked with them to bring out the Reports and Statistics of the games using Zoho DB & Reports.

Checkout the same @   http://www.cygpune2008.com/graphical-reports/cygpune2008-report.php.
Games official website: http://www.cygpune2008.com (Navigate to the "Results Statistics"" section from the home page to view the reports)

We would like to thank Dimakh Consultants, the official website hosting partner of Commonwealth Youth Games 2008 for providing this opportunity.

Hope you like it. Lets us know your feedback's on the same. Also feel free to contact us (support at zohodb dot com), in case you require any help in solving your reporting needs of your business using Zoho DB & Reports. We would be more than happy to help you out.

Thanks,
Clarence
Zoho DB & Reports - Online Reporting & BI Service

There was an era (not very long ago) when shooting videos and sharing them on the internet was an esoteric art. Then YouTube and some easy-to-use video cameras and software came along and made it easy for regular folks like you and me to shoot anything and post it on the web.

This is what some people refer to as the 'democratization of the tools of production'. It was a concept popularized by the 'Long Tail', a best-seller book by Chris Anderson. Regardless of your own views of that book (there is some controversy about it), the concept of the democratization of the tools of production is evident in YouTube, blogs, music and some other cases.

Where am I going with this? Bear with me for a second.

Not long ago, ‘geeks’ were the only people who could create data-driven applications on the web. And there was a reason for that - doing so required quite a bit of training, and even years to master just one of the many components involved in creating applications - the operating system, database, application server, web server, security…

But that’s not the case anymore. Zoho Creator is another example of the democratization of the tools of production. In this case, it is about the tools for creating web, business and data-driven applications. With Zoho Creator, everyone can create applications for their own particular need.

But the question is – what kind of applications? There are many kinds of applications out there, and while Zoho Creator can certainly be used by professional developers looking to commercialize their applications, but right now I want to focus on the kind of applications that everyone can create on their own, for themselves and their own consumption.

Let me explain with a simple 2-by-2 matrix.

On the horizontal axis we have the 'Complexity of the Application' - how advanced they are in terms of their logic, the formulas and algorithms they use. On the other vertical axis we have ‘Uniqueness of the Requirements'. Lower in the scale means more people share those same requirements. And these two axes are a continuum, but for the sake of this discussion, we'll imagine just two scenarios for each axis.

So in the high-complexity/common-requirements quadrant we have those applications like ERP and CRM. They are complex applications which required a lot of logic, but millions and millions of people share the same basic requirements. Sure, people spend a lot of time (and money) customizing their ERP system, but most of that has to do with the underlying business process than with the software itself.

In the high-complexity/unique-requirements quadrant we have those applications that land rockets on the moon. Don't expect to just 'buy and install' those applications.

Then there are those applications which are low-complexity and share common requirements - that everybody needs. Say, a calendar or calculator application. Pick one, they all yield pretty much the same result and are used pretty much the same way.

But then there are those applications that are not quite as complex as a rocket-launching system, but they are so unique to a particular situation that you can't readily get them off the shelf either. What should we call these? Luckily, Clay Shirky already came up with a name for them - "Situated Software".

Situated Software is the kind of applications people need to collect, share, keep track and report on a variety of data. But they are not long projects that warrant the formal involvement of your IT department, formal methodology and end-less meetings. They might be short-lived projects, almost bordering on disposable software, or they may be applications created to be used for a long while.

In a business environment it might mean keeping track of their IT assets, people registering for an event, managing contacts in a simplified way, tracking bugs, issues or customer requests/comments, etc. For a school, situated software might be about keeping track of student information and their parents, or a simple library records app. There are as many examples as unique ‘situations’ for people – that is, too many to list.

How many? Well, there are already more than 100,000 applications created with Zoho Creator. Zoho Creator makes 'Situated Software' possible for everyone. No, we're not all turning into Star-Wars-and-Star-Trek-loving software developers. We can continue to be regular folks, but we can write our own (situated) software every once in a while.

Three years back on Sep 15th, we launched out first application Zoho Writer. Since then, as you notice, lot has changed in Zoho. We have added 17 other applications, 4 utilities and many add-ons. Most important of all, we now have over 1 Million users using our applications.

What makes Zoho unique is the broad set of applications we offer. The real power of these suite of apps will be in display when the applications are integrated with each other. Integration between apps will continue to be the focus for the next year apart from enhancements to the existing ones.

On this occasion, I'd like to take a moment to thank all our users for supporting us during this marathon.

Today at the Office 2.0 conference, we are launching a new addition to Zoho Suite - Zoho Docs
Zoho Docs is a central place to manage all your personal documents. Your Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations that you created in Writer, Sheet and Show will now be available at this central location.

This video provides a quick overview of Zoho Docs.

Zoho Docs supports folders. You can drag-n-drop files to these folders. The folder structure you create in Zoho Docs will be the common folder structure inside Zoho. Eventually this folder structure will appear in all other Zoho Applications.

Apart from aggregating you documents, the application also lets you view your documents, spreadsheets and presentations as a tab within the application. If you choose to edit any of these files, the file is opened in Edit mode in the appropriate Zoho Application. All documents inside Zoho Docs can be tagged, Downloaded, Shared etc. They can also be sorted by name, creation date and modified date.

Zoho Docs accepts all file types. To keep the upload process simple, you can upload ZIP files and Unzip them after the upload. Your My Documents folder can be uploaded to Zoho Docs in a single shot for example. When unzipped, your existing folder structure will be retained. When the files are uploaded, we automatically scan for viruses.

Zoho Docs also supports Group Sharing. If you have any groups created, you can share the documents to your existing groups. All documents shared to groups can also be viewed in Zoho Docs under the 'My Groups' section.

The Views section groups the documents by type across all folders. Here you can view 'All files' from all folders, Recent Documents, Documents from Zoho Writer, Spreadsheets from Zoho Sheet, Presentations from Zoho Show, Pictures and other file types.

Zoho Chat is integrated right into Zoho Docs. You can now chat with all your Zoho Contacts without leaving the application Zoho Docs.

As you notice, you'll see multiple Zoho Services integrated well to form the Zoho Docs application. We have documents from Zoho Writer, Spreadsheets from Zoho Sheet, Presentations from Zoho Show, Groups information from Zoho Accounts, Chat from Zoho Chat - all integrated into Zoho Docs. The plan is to provide you the information where you need it rather than having to hunt for information inside applications.

Zoho Docs is also integrated into Zoho Business as the 'Documents' application.

This application has been created entirely by user feedback. We hope you'll find this application useful. Please do give this a try and let us know what you think.

PS: We are hosting a Zoho Party at the Office 2.0 Conference today to celebrate our Million User milestone. This event is open to all Zoho Users. We hope you can join us to celebrate the occassion. Looking forward to seeing you.

Call them the technology equivalent of old religious wars: Mac vs Windows, Mainframes vs PCs, Blackberries vs. iPhones, Open vs Proprietary... they all have passionate people on both sides of the issue.

The latest one is the Software-as-a-Service or Software-plus-Services debate. The Software-as-a-Service camp argues that every single piece of software can be delivered over the internet. The Software-plus-Services crowd argues that the user is served best when there is local software installed on their machines is complemented with internet services.

Well, it just dawned on me that this battle is over. Done. C'est Fini.

The clear winner is the Software-plus-Services camp. Let me explain.

To access the on-line services you need a browser - and that is software. The browser needs an operating system - and that is software too. So really, we all need software to access internet services like Zoho or Google search. But that's about everything the Software+Services camps has gotten right.

On the other hand, of course you don't need bloated, expensive, buggy, updated-every-once-in-a-blue-moon software to access the services you need and care about. The Software side of the S+S equation can be made of Linux+Firefox, Windows+Firefox, MacOs+Firefox or, as of lately, Safari on your iPhone or Opera Mini in some other mobile phones.

As for me, I use Windows Vista. Certainly not because I wanted to, but because Microsoft forced me to get Vista on my new Dell machine. So I'm stuck with it. I was apprehensive about using Vista ... but after a few days I got used to it. Wanna know why? No, it's not because Vista is good - it's because it doesn't matter. The underlying operating system you use is irrelevant. 99% of the time I'm at a computer, I'm inside the browser, and I keep about 15 local files on my machine. The rest of the local applications I access are applications every single operating system has... since about 1994. Traditional software is not dead, it's just that for the vast majority of users it just doesn't matter anymore.

Why do I bring this topic up today? Today marks the start of Office 2.0, a conference about new technologies in the workplace that Zoho is sponsoring.

So in that spirit, I thought I'd do a quick recap of some of the things businesses can do without installing any software... not in the server room neither on their local machines (other than their operating system and Firefox browser):

Businesses can do all of that on-line, with just their browser (and yes, businesses can do most of it at a single destination, Zoho.com). Office 2.0 will help to remind us and highlight how the world is changing no matter what the dinosaurs of yore keep saying. Yes, you do need software: your browser... everything else businesses can get on-line, we hope at Zoho.

See you at the Office 2.0 conference!

Rodrigo