Zoho to Office 2010: Competition welcome!
Sridhar Vembu may have felt a certain kinship with Mark Twain when he responded in a recent blog post to reports that the upcoming Microsoft Office 2010 office suite is a threat to Zoho, his online office applications development company. “One reaction to Microsoft’s announcement of Office 2010 which we find amusing (or whatever the term that is appropriate in discussing one’s own obituary) is ‘ This spells the end of Zoho,’ ” write Vembu, Zoho’s CEO, adding, “But if there’s anything I’ve learned from my years in the tech world is that companies don’t get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide.” Zoho, a smaller player in the online office suites world of Google that soon will be joined by Microsoft, is a highly successful, privately held company with reported revenues of $50 million and world-wide operations. The company’s often integrated office components range from word processing to email and are available in as many as 30 languages. In Part One of an interviiew with Robert Scoble, Vembu discusses his 13-year-old company’s expanding role in cloud-based office applications where he says competition — rather than monopolies — will rule. Links mentioned in connection with this video include: Zoho — www.zoho.com Zoho blogs — blogs.zoho.com