March 4th, 2008
Zoho exploiting Google Gears Mobile
As we start to see the convergence between online and offline world’s, Zoho is first out the office productivity gate with a use case for Google Gears Mobile.
Zoho is now supporting the Windows Mobile platform via Gears which allows it to work in both online and offline modes. There’s a slight gotcha in that it only offers ‘view only’ mode when working offline, having assumed that 90 per cent of people will only view in this mode. The first time you try this mode, users are prompted to install Google Gears.
In the current version, Zoho restricts users to loading the last 20 documents in online mode and five documents in offline mode. The company plans to give users the option to decide how many documents they wish to download for offline usage. I’d be more impressed if they provided the option to choose which documents need downloading. Add a touch of workflow goodness and documents could be pushed to the user.
Given that Phil Wainewright believes hell will freeze over before Microsoft puts a productivity suite into the Internet cloud, Zoho is now giving Windows Mobile users a solid reason to consider switching. The fact it is free will deter some IT departments but as Zoho continues to push ahead with development, I can see the potential for putting (some) large enterprise class capability in the hands of SMEs. Given this is the largest segment of business that remains largely untapped by the mega vendors, I wonder how long it will be before we see Zoho links to its applications being bundled into laptops and mobile devices?
There’s a nifty 5 minute video that shows how Zoho Writer works on mobile and Zoli Erdos has a rundown of the service.
Access to Zoho Mobile is available from this link.
Dennis Howlett has been providing comment and analysis on enterprise software since 1991. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
