Zoho has announced the general availability of its new low-code IoT platform, Zoho IoT. The new platform will provide organisations with a complete platform to create, deploy and manage IoT applications across organisations.
The platform enables organisations to collect and manage data from deployed IoT sensors at scale. It ingests the data and can then provide real-time analysis of operational performance. The recently announced Zoho Analytics supports the platform. The new platform will enable organisations to benefit from a fully functional solution that does not require the extensive technical expertise often required for IoT Platforms.
Zoho has developed three specific accelerators and two full IoT solutions for organisations. These pre-built tools can be used out of the box or customised for individual organisations. Alternatively, organisations can build their customised solution to meet their business’s needs.
Zoho has identified 6 key areas which differentiate Zoho IoT and make it equal or stand out amongst competitor platforms:
- Agnostic data collection from different IoT Hardware devices with over 40 supported protocols
- Highly Customisable with its low-code platform
- AI/ML driven real-time analytics
- Secure cloud deployment
- Multiple solutions for diverse applications and industries
- Simple integration with third-party applications
- Integration with other Zoho Applications
Jason Bloomberg, Managing Director of analyst firm Intellyx, commented, “The Zoho IoT platform connects a wide range of IoT devices through a cloud-based system that provides robust data integration, orchestration, and visualisation capabilities—turning IoT solutions into virtual twins.
“Leveraging Zoho’s low-code and AI features, customers can develop customised digital twin solutions for complex environments like factories and office buildings, unlocking cost savings and business agility.”
Custom and out-of-the-box solutions
While organisations can leverage the low-code IoT platform to build their own IoT applications, Zoho has several tools already developed.
Industrial IoT
The Industrial IoT (IIOT) Accelerator can integrate with manufacturing equipment and shop floor systems. It will enable the automation of factory operations and unlock increased visibility. This accelerator offers the ability to assist with:
- Machine Monitoring
- Production Line Monitoring
- Equipment effectiveness
- Shift and job allocation
- Maintenance and SLAs
- Quality analysis
- Asset and inventory tracking
- Energy and sustainability
- Utilities Monitoring
- Safety and control
Energy Management
As organisations seek net zero, Zoho’s Energy Management accelerator will help them track energy usage. Thus, the AI-powered energy savings tool will provide insights to reduce costs and forecast consumption in real-time. The accelerator is targeted at Energy auditors, Energy/Utility suppliers, Facility managers, and OEMs.
Smart building
The Smart Building accelerator enables real estate management organisations to better manage energy consumption, track different factors such as heat, or manage alerts to identify where preventative maintenance or repairs are required. The accelerator enables Building owners, tenants, ESCOs, and facility managers to improve the efficiency of their buildings and lower costs.
Indoor Air Quality
Indoor Air quality is important for some organisations. They must ensure that the atmosphere is clean using an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) solution. Affected organisations include schools, hospitals, offices, malls, and community buildings. A leading SI in Australia has used the Zoho IOT—IAQ Solution to reduce the risk of airborne pollutants transmission and promote a healthy environment in Schools.
Smart facilities
The Smart facility solution is preconfigured to capture, analyse and report on factors such as:
- Indoor air quality
- Sound levels
- Lavatory odour detection
- Lavatory occupancy monitoring
- Smart button monitoring
- Mini-leak detection
- Smart trash bins
- AI Occupancy detection
Other
Other options include the support of OEMs to unlock new revenue streams, enhance efficiency and enable real-time insights and remote monitoring for smart products and connected OEMs.
Organisations are already seeing the benefits of Zoho IoT
The platform is already tested and live in several locations across the world. In Dubai, a luxury hotel is monitoring temperature, humidity, CO2 concentration, particulate matter, etc. to help maintain and improve better environmental conditions.
Using Zoho IoT, customers can transform data into actionable insights, predict system outages, identify anomalies or forecast trends, optimise operations, and enhance customer experiences.
Mike Tanyi, Director of Marketing and IT at SHARC Energy. “As a global leader in wastewater energy for sustainable heating and cooling, we needed to empirically demonstrate its real-world impact across multiple customer installations.
“Zoho IoT provided an enterprise-grade, ‘single pane of glass’ that tracks energy and carbon savings, temperature, pressure, and flow rates, along with automated alerts. This has enabled us to showcase the value of wastewater energy to our stakeholders properly.”
The Importance of Partners
Zoho Partners is also enthusiastic about the release. Deploying an IoT pilot will almost certainly require consultancy; there is more than just the software involved.
Vishal Patel, CEO of Fluid Edge commented, “Zoho IoT is an incredibly powerful platform for developing unlimited custom IoT solutions for unique requirements. The platform accelerates time to market, expedites development, and maximizes profits. Zoho IoT offers multi-vertical solutions for a wide range of industries.”
Pricing and availability
Zoho IoT is available now. It is also reasonably priced with a very low-level entry cost, enabling organisations to pilot the solution quickly for their own needs. Pricing in the UK starts a £39.20 per application per month for 25 devices/assets across 10 locations, with six months of data retention.
Prices scale up in four tiers to Enterprise pricing, which includes 500 devices/Asset per month for £399.20. Above enterprise, there is also Flex pricing, which supports thousands of IoT devices. It will be interesting to see Zoho reconsider these prices. While the starter package will support most pilots, many applications and IoT deployments will need more than 500 devices monitored.
According to the IoT Analytics’ 171-page State of IoT Summer 2024 report, there were 16.6 billion connected IoT devices by the end of 2023. This will grow by 13% to 18.8 billion devices by the end of 2024. The number of devices in a single building is potentially huge.
Sachin Agrawal, Managing Director, Zoho UK, “We believe that connecting Things with business workflows is key to creating a seamless customer experience. Zoho IoT is a platform-first solution, designed to offer customisable and flexible features for a range of industries. With its low-code, interoperable, and secure framework, Zoho IoT simplifies adoption while delivering powerful functionality that elevates operational efficiency and customer experience beyond standard offerings.”
Enterprise Times What does this mean?
This is a major release by Zoho in a market that is significant. The Business Research Company estimated that the IoT market has grown from $464.45 billion to $552.87 billion in 2024 at a CAGR of 19%. Its analyst firm expects it to grow to $1175.77 billion by 2028 at a CAGR of 20.8%.
Zoho Applications are typically easy to deploy, and if it can quickly release solid use cases, this could significantly boost the company’s revenues. What will be interesting to see is how quickly Zoho can release new case studies and integrate the rest of its applications into this new platform.
