Zoho has announced a major release of its already powerful and widely used Analytics platform, Zoho Analytics. The release includes a comprehensive update and new features across the board. Zoho has identified four areas in which it has improved.
- Data Management
- Infused Generative AI
- Data Science & Machine Learning Studio
- Platform Extensibility
Zoho provided a significant update across the board, making the solution more efficient, comprehensive and powerful.
Michael Fauscette, CEO and Chief Analyst at Arion Research, commented, “In today’s fast-paced business environment, the ability to manage and analyze data efficiently is crucial. The latest release of Zoho Analytics elevates the standard for self-service BI by integrating AI-powered features that streamline complex data workflows.
“With enhanced data integration, robust decision intelligence, and seamless extensibility, Zoho Analytics empowers organizations to gain deeper insights and make informed decisions faster than ever before.”
Data Management
Analytics engines are only as accurate as the data that they ingest and analyse. Zoho has enhanced its data management hub, making it easier for Data Engineers, Data Analysts, and Data Scientists to ingest, transform and prepare data for analysis.
With this release, Zoho has added more than 25 new data connectors and enhanced several others. It means the platform now has over 500 data connectors in total. The Connectors include stream analytics such as Cloud Pub/Sub, Kafka, and PubNub.
There are new connectors to Enterprise Applications, including Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Business Central, Expensify, Pipedrive, monday.com and QualtricsXM. Finally, Zoho has expanded its data connectors, including Databricks, Dremio, Yellowbrick, neo4j, elastic and Google Cloud Storage.
Users can now build and manage complex pipelines with a visual builder that simplifies the process. Users can add custom transforms and new ML models using a Python code studio. Zoho has infused AI into these components, enabling users to ask in natural language for Zia, its Copilot, to build code or transform the data.
Zoho Flow allows the orchestration of data pipelines with workflows. The platform contains a sandbox and supports version control to improve compliance and enable users to roll back to the previous version where needed.
There is also a new unified metrics layer that provides a strong semantic layer foundation for quality analysis and measurement. It supports:
- Data Modelling
- Metrics Store, a central repository to store metrics for later use
- Access Controls, to control access to data sets to maintain security and privacy
- Headless BI allows data apps to consume the same metrics in real time for consistent and dependable insights.
Empowered with Generative AI
Zoho has embedded Generative AI across the Zoho Analytics platform. Zia is accessible in most places within the application. It is available as an assistant to respond to requests for information or insights or to provide greater context.
Zia democratizes the use of Zoho Analytics for business analysts, data analysts and business users, enabling non-technical users to interrogate the prepared data sets.
Zoho’s AI-powered, automated insights engine, Zia Insights, now provides diagnostic analytics contextually, bringing decision intelligence into the platform.
Zia can now understand and respond to questions in English, French and Spanish. Zoho has also built an integration into Microsoft Teams, enabling customers to access Zoho Analytics in the collaboration platform of choice.
Auto Analysis is a new feature that can automate the calculation of metrics, the creation of reports and generate dashboards. It reduces time to value. Zoho Insights can create brief, standard, verbose reports depending upon the style required by the user. It interprets data sets, summarises and analysis rapidly.
Possibly the most impressive update is the integration to Open AI, enabled by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). It integrates with Open AI using BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) and enables them to find and leverage public datasets and build SQL queries faster.
Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio
The new DSML studio allows Data Scientists and Citizen Data Scientists to build custom machine-learning models. DSML Studio has a no-code approach that allows users to quickly build models, see the results both in data and visualisations and then further iterate the models adjusting factors or adding new ones. Users can train, test, compare, deploy, and manage models.
The Code Studio enables users to build their own Python ML Models or create data transformations. Once created, users can train the models using a pay-as-you-use model and can vary the power of the compute power used to do so. Use cases could include the analysis and prediction of customer churn. The platform allows users to import Python models and external libraries, which they can then execute on the platform.
Platform Extensibility
Zoho continues to have an open architecture for its solutions, and Zoho Analytics is no exception. The Zoho Marketplace already contains a wealth of third-party data connector addons. Partners and vendors can build, publish and sell new connectors using the no-code data connector builder.
A new BI fabric delivers a portal that can access insights from across multiple BI platforms including Power BI and Tableau. The portal includes fine-grained access control to ensure privacy and security are maintained.
Zoho Analytics integrates seamlessly with Zoho Flow, delivering access to over 500 app triggers. The solution also enables users to trigger actionable workflows, including URL and Webhook actions.
A huge update is available now
The new Zoho Analytics version is available now worldwide. There are several layers of pricing which support a varied number of users and data set volume. The entry-level pricing starts at £19 per month and supports 2 users and 500,000 rows, enabling experimentation.
Some features are only available at higher levels, and the detail of what is supported is worth checking. For example, the capability to roll back imported data is only available at the Enterprise level. The most commonly used level is Premium, at £92 per month for 15 users and 5 million rows. Organisations can uplift the number of users and also support view only users, for additional costs.
The release has over 100 updates. These include new visualisations, enhanced dashboard building, audit and admin controls, revamped mobile apps, Right-to-Left (RTL) support, and more.
Customers are impressed. Alun Rafique, CEO and Co-Founder at Market Dojo commented, “As developers, Zoho Analytics 6.0’s new AutoML capabilities caught our attention immediately. Our team is currently working on a model to analyze and predict customer churn, among other projects. Zia Insights’ diagnostic capabilities have been a game-changer as well, helping us understand the underlying causes of a spike or drop in sales or performance so we can take quick action.
“Again, as solutions providers, it’s critical we understand what’s working and what’s not within our own company before helping other businesses and professionals. Zoho Analytics 6.0 continues to give us that insight and more.
“Ask Zia’ is another useful feature. With a simple prompt, I’m able to get the right insights I need instantly. The new chart types are amazing, and I’m particularly impressed with the racing and sunburst charts.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Zoho has released a comprehensive and significant update that could shake up the BI world. It will be interesting to see what impact these impressive updates have on both the Gartner BI magic quadrant, where Zoho was last listed as a niche player, and in the G2 Grid for Analytics platforms.
Vinnie Mirchandani, Founder and Chief Analyst, Deal Architect, noted, “Zoho Analytics has quietly become a major player in the crowded Business Intelligence market. It is the second most used “application” in the Zoho One suite – impressive when you consider the suite has over 50 applications.
“In addition to direct users of the suite, several ISV and SI partners have adapted the analytics engine for their platforms, and as a result, Zoho can claim 70,000 analytics customers. Importantly, that also translates to a wide breadth and depth of data that Zoho’s over 500 connectors have access to.
“That range also positions it well for the growing Generative AI market, especially as customers look beyond initial, simplistic use cases for cross-functional and vertical ones.”
Where Zoho differentiates is the comprehensive and immersive nature of Zia, supporting users across the application as a Copilot. It will be interesting to see how Zoho develops its generative AI and AI capabilities in the next version of the platform. It already has one of the most comprehensive AI-embedded platforms.
