DISQUS

Great post, Dave. I felt exactly the same thing - this is the IBM PC Moment for the industry ...

Mathew, no question Google has the formidable brand. I didn't take your post negatively either - I actually appreciate your mentioning Zoho! I was just saying (assuring, really!) Zoho is a viable choice against the much bigger Google - because we have a sustainable business model, and sufficient scale to compete. Sort of like how a 50-store chain can often compete against a 5000 store chain, by specializing and differentiating.

Our key differentiation is richness of features, sharp focus on the needs of demanding business users, and the breadth of product portfolio addressing such needs.

Mathew,
Thanks for using Zoho! While there is no such thing as perfect security or perfect safety, we take all the standard precautions in the Zoho data center. It is in a top-notch facility in California (as well as a remote backup), and we keep 3 copies of your data + a backup. We have 700K+ users already on Zoho, growing fairly rapidly.

Yes, scale economics does apply, but it plays even at our size. Cost per user to scale tends to fall rapidly starting from zero users, and then it flattens out (so the first million user drops the cost very rapidly, while going from 10 to 11 million does not drop the per user cost that much).

Finally, Zoho's parent AdventNet has been in business 12 years, with profitable, organic growth. From a development perspective, we have demonstrated the ability to execute, and we will continue to put out a steady stream of updates.

Sridhar