Zoho Advances its Value-Leading Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform
Zoho Analytics 6.0 brings AI-infused upgrades to data management, natural-language interaction, and data science capabilities – all at super-low prices. Zoho is not just a cost-competitive disruptor in the CRM, personal productivity, and collaboration spaces; since 2009 the company also has been steadily gaining market share in the business intelligence (BI) and analytics arena. Zoho Analytics 6.0, the latest upgrade of the vendor’s BI and analytics platform, announced on September 12, ups the ante by adding advanced, AI-powered capabilities for data management, natural language (NL) interaction, and data science. While some of the tools are aimed at data professionals, they’re integrated with a platform that brings the power of insight, prediction, and action back to ordinary business users.
Going Deeper on Data Integration and Data Management
To recap some of the basics of Zoho Analytics, the platform is most often purchased as a multitenant software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs on Zoho Cloud, which operates 16 data centers around the globe, with redundant data centers in North America, Europe, India, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. Zoho Cloud has stringent, transparent privacy policies and meets compliance requirements in multiple countries and jurisdictions (including the California Consumer Privacy Act in the U.S. and the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe).
Zoho Analytics 6.0 upgrades include new data modeling capabilities and a metrics store that helps ensure consistency and promote reuse of approved metrics and measures.
Zoho Analytics is also available as a server-based offering deployable through the AWS and Azure marketplaces or by customers themselves on other public clouds or on private clouds. Where data integration and data management are concerned, Zoho Analytics offers out-of-the-box connections with more than 500 data sources, including cloud and on-premises databases, popular productivity tools and business applications, files, feeds, and spreadsheets. Zoho DataPrep, which is included with Zoho Analytics Enterprise, supports automated data modeling and blending, smart (augmented) data cleansing, no-code data transformation, data enrichment, and data cataloging.
Infusing AI Across the Platform
Generative AI (GenAI) continues to grab lots of attention, but it’s not the only form of AI that’s driving innovation. Zoho is infusing a variety of AI capabilities into Zoho Analytics to speed analysis and drive deeper insights.
Supporting Data Science and Machine Learning
Many organizations want to go beyond descriptive and diagnostic analytics – rear-view analysis of what happened and why. They want to graduate to predictive and prescriptive analytics – gaining insight into what will happen and what should be done about it. Following this interest, many BI and analytics vendors are moving into the predictive domain. With the 6.0 release, Zoho is adding a new DSML Studio supporting data science and machine learning. DSML Studio is aimed at data scientists, data engineers, and savvy data analysts, but once their data-transformation and modeling work is done, the resulting predictive results can be shared with the broad base of ordinary business users through reports, dashboards, key metrics, and so on. A salesperson, for example, could be exposed to leads predicted to be most likely to convert, and a service agent could see if a customer they are busy supporting is likely to churn.
Constellation’s Analysis
There’s more to the Zoho Analytics 6.0 upgrade, including analytic portal integration with third-party tools including Tableau and Power BI, but the over-arching theme is adding more features, more AI/ML/GenAI capabilities, and more value to an already competitive platform. As detailed in an in-depth analysis of Zoho Analytics, among Zoho Analytics’ few weaknesses is the fact that it’s only available as a service on Zoho Cloud. That’s not a concern for customers using other Zoho apps that also run on Zoho Cloud, but for customers with data concentrated on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud have a choice: either live with cloud data connections (and their potential latency) or self-manage Zoho Analytics on a third-party cloud. One other drawback: Zoho Analytics is a view-only system lacking write-back capabilities, a drawback in certain embedded scenarios where interactivity with parent applications is desirable.
Again, Zoho Analytics’ greatest strength is the value that it offers for very little money. There are entry-level price points, but the buying option that makes sense for any organization with more than 100 employees is Zoho Analytics Enterprise, which starts at $455 per month for 50 users, based on an annual subscription. The Enterprise package includes everything, including Zoho Data Prep, Zia Insights, Ask Zia, Auto Analysis, DSML Studio, the analytic portal, and higher-level allowances for data connectors, storage, data refreshes, alerts, scheduled report delivery, and more. One last point is about the Zoho Analytics support experience, which is highly praised by customers.
