While this might sound odd and unbelievable to many I think Microsoft will do good to buy Zoho. While Zoho faces competition from Google with it’s Google apps there have been numerous complaints form customers about lack of proper integration between the various apps and with gmail which is quite frustrating to the enterprise user. Google has also been playing catch up with Zoho in terms of bringing in new apps and still lacks the complete office suite that Zoho does – including project management, CRM, marketplace etc. While Salesforce has a great SaaS product they will be beaten by Zoho soon as they lack the complete suite that Zoho seems unbeatable at. While Zoho has been slow at some products like Zoho mail, they have finally understood what the customer is really looking for.

I think Microsoft will try to buy Zoho. Microsoft has promised to release a free online version of their next MS Office but even they will struggle to integrate the suite well enough to meet the needs of a SME who is today moving to Google apps/ Zoho etc. While this makes commercial sense – Microsoft will be afraid of going for such a deal as the stock market will perceive them to be unable to build such a product themselves and see it as a sign of weakness. Which this might be true, but I still think they will be stupid not to approach Zoho.

Will Microsoft buy Zoho? is a post from: @chirdeep