Zoho launched a new version of Zoho Analytics that includes more than 100 enhancements in a bid to appeal to data scientists who can then feed business users easy to consume insights and models.
The company added multiple artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) features to Zoho Analytics including an ML model-building studio, integration with OpenAI, and more than 25 connectors to third party business intelligence systems.
With the launch of Zoho Analytics 6.0, Zoho is looking to converge AI and ML in the context of business intelligence (BI) workflows with Zoho Flow integration. The bet is that Zoho and its pricing model can bring "AI-powered self-service BI" to multiple enterprise personas.
Historically, data science has been too complicated for broad business user adoption. Zoho Analytics is looking to bridge that data scientist/business user gap with a new DSML Studio for data science and machine learning and be one pane of BI glass via integration with Salesforce Tableau, Microsoft's PowerBI and other third-party platforms.
The new version of Zoho Analytics touches on many of the themes that Constellation Research analyst Doug Henschen has been highlighting including the combination of BI and generative AI, value plays in BI, and the importance of embedded analytics. “Zoho Analytics’ greatest strength is the value that it offers for very little money,” said Henschen. “The latest upgrade adds yet more features, particularly augmented analytics and data science capabilities, to bring more value to an already competitive platform.”
In a blog post, Henschen added:
"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."
According to Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist for Zoho, Zoho Analytics, which launched as Zoho Reports in 2009, is the first offering that integrates the company's investments over the last decade. Those investments include automation, no-code and low-code development, third party integration, machine learning and Zoho's Zia AI engine.
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Zoho Analytics is part of Zoho Enterprise but can be purchased as a standalone application. Zoho Analytics has more than 17,000 standalone users up from 10,000 in 2020. Via the Zoho One suite, Zoho Analytics has more than 70,000 businesses that tap into the platform daily.
"The latest version of Zoho Analytics is one of the first solutions from the company that takes advantage of every one of these decades-long investments," said Vegesna. "The result is a democratized platform that is powerful, intelligent, and flexible enough to benefit everyone and anyone."
Zoho Analytics has four plans, the most popular plan is Premium at $115 a month billed annually for 15 users and 5 million rows. Zoho Analytics Enterprise is $455 a month billed annually for 50 users and 50 million rows. Additional users are $6.40 per user per month billed annually. Viewers are $80 for 25 viewers per month billed annually.
“The buying option that makes sense for organizations with 100 or more employees is Zoho Analytics Enterprise, which bundles 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,” said Henschen.
Here's a look at Zoho Analytics by category.
Data Management Hub
Zoho Analytics gets expanded data management tools including Stream Analytics, ETL data pipelines, metric enhancements and a bevy of connectors.
According to Zoho, Zoho Analytics now has more than 500 data connectors by adding 25 new connectors including streaming source options Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Kafka and the PubNub platform.
Zoho also made Zoho Analytics more accessible by giving business users the ability to create and manage ETL data pipelines, visual builder tools to build custom transforms and ML models with Python Code Studio. Zoho Analytics is also infused with Zoho's natural language with Ask Zia.
Zoho Flow, the vendor’s optional workflow engine, also is integrated with Zoho Analytics to orchestrate data pipelines. In addition, Zoho Analytics gains a new Metrics Layer to manage all business metrics in one place. Data apps can also consume the same metrics as Zoho Analytics Headless BI mode.
Generative AI
Throughout Zoho Analytics, Zoho has added generative AI capabilities. The platform features Open AI integration with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) using Open AI APIs and bring your own keys. Users can more easily find public datasets and create formula and SQL queries.
Other genAI additions to Zoho Analytics include:
- Zia Insights, Zoho's automated insights engine, now provides diagnostic analytics contextually.
- Ask Zia, Zoho's natural language query AI copilot, now allows users to trigger actions and build custom data models. The Ask Zia Bot can also be integrated with instant messaging platforms including Microsoft Teams.
- Auto Analysis, a tool within Zoho Analytics, has been enhanced to take advantage of the Metrics Layer and automatically generate metrics, reports and dashboards.
Data Science and Machine Learning Studio
Zoho added the Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio to Zoho Analytics. DSML Studio enables users to build custom machine learning models for business use cases.
DSML Studio includes:
- AutoML, a no-code assistant to build custom ML models, to train, test, compare and deploy models.
- Code Studio, a new Python code environment to create custom ML models. Code Studio can import Python models and external built libraries.
Extensibility
Zoho Analytics has a no-code builder for data connectors, actions, BI fabric and software developer kits.
Here's a look at other extensibility features:
- BI fabric gives Zoho Analytics to consolidate insights from multiple BI platforms including Power BI and Tableau into one portal.
- Zoho Analytics users can trigger actionable workflows and integrates with Zoho Flow, which has more than 500 app triggers.
- No-code data connector builder to bring data from custom applications. Data connectors can be sold on Zoho Marketplace.
