ZohoCRM On Demand Beta Launched
We just made a very important new service available on our site. It is the ZohoCRM on demand service. You can check it out at http://www.zoho.com.
There is an interesting history here. About 18 months ago, AdventNet started working on a CRM On Demand system, which we felt is a logical extension of our Help Desk (http://www.servicedeskplus.com) solutions. This effort, like other AdventNet products, is based on Java.
Then about 9 months ago, some of our people felt that they want to explore new open source PHP based approaches to the same problem. They strongly felt that PHP has emerged as a strong contender to write enterprise applications, and they wanted to explore this. Since the open source business model is different from what AdventNet is used to, a new company called vtiger http://www.vtiger.com was formed, with angel funding from AdventNet. AdventNet continued its course of the Java based On Demand service, while vtiger went ahead and launched a PHP open source product offering, initially based on SugarCRM 1.0, but later went on its own separate way due to differences with SugarCRM. ZohoCRM is the fruit of the original internal AdventNet project. Note that it is not based on the vtiger code base (ZohoCRM is Java based).
To symbolize our commitment to open source and to provide options to ZohoCRM customers, we have decided to support free migration of ZohoCRM On Demand service data to the vtiger CRM product. Any time a customer wants to migrate from the service, they can not only take out their data, but they have a place where this data can go into. It is a kind of an industry first, we believe. More and more, as On Demand services proliferate, vendors have to offer such options, so customers have choices about where their data resides.
What is the value propostion of ZohoCRM? It is an On Demand service, so no installation or administration is required. It is in beta, but there is a lot more to come!
It is an exciting new “Advent”ure for us. Now it is up to you, our valued users, to decide!
Sridhar