Zoho expands Zoho One, Introduces Blockchain Capabilities in Zoho Sign

Zoho has rolled out the next-generation version of its business applications suite Zoho One with Blockchain capabilities in Zoho Sign.

Zoho is a Software as a Service company that offers more than 35 products to aid your sales and marketing, finance, supports, and recruitment needs, and lets you focus only on your business.

As a part of the offering, the Zoho Sign now includes verification of customers with the help of blockchain-based timestamping. Zoho Sign is using Ethereum platform. Zoho Sign is a digital signature app that helps digitally sign documents online. Now when a document is signed with Zoho Sign, an Ethereum transaction is triggered with a document hash attached or added to the transaction notes, the announcement says.

Besides, the new suite lets the users handle all aspects of a business from sales and marketing, human resource, operations, finance, and business intelligence. The new services include a process automation app, single sign-on, telephony, and blockchain capabilities, the announcement notes.

Executive Opinion

Zoho's Chief Evangelist, said, Raju Vegesna,  "Technology is supposed to help businesses. Instead, it has evolved into a complex beast customers have to tame—from juggling apps from multiple vendors to trying to solve the multi-app integration puzzle to dealing with vendors forcing customers into expensive, lengthy contracts. The technology industry has gone too far down this path and this has to change. With Zoho One, we want to change all of that. It's a technology platform to run your entire business with a vendor that is easy to do business with and you can trust. With Zoho One, you are not just licensing technology. You are licensing peace of mind."

CEO and Chief Research Officer of Ventana Research, Mark Smith, said,
"The industry has evolved to unfortunately accept a litany of disconnected applications and platforms in the cloud, increasing the cost to business, wasting the time and resources of organizations, and becoming digitally ineffective. Zoho and Zoho One's unified cloud-business-applications platform enables organizations to become digitally effective with employees, customers, partners, and suppliers. Zoho One simplifies the cloud computing infrastructure with sophisticated orchestration of business processes across front and back office to the unified communications and collaboration required to streamline digital engagement and operations of any business."

Zoho One Offering

Zoho One has been available for two years into the market and claims to serve around 20000 customers, said the announcement. It has been priced at the cost of $30 (INR 1500) per employee or $75 (INR 3000) per user.

Zoho Telephony platform, PhoneBridge integrates with around 50 vendors and helps users to make calls from the Zoho apps.

The single sign-on capability allows the users to sign it into the third-party apps, which makes it easier for the customers to manage the multiple apps with the help of a single platform, the announcement infers.

The company has also deployed a new business workflow management application, by the name as Orchestly, which lets the customers create, manage, and optimize their business processes with an intuitive drag and drop interface.

The company is also working on the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to address the issues in the industrial services management chain. In July, WebNMS the IoT division of the Zoho has signed a deal with the Swedish firm HMS Networks, which is a supplier of solutions for the industrial IoT and communication purpose.