Zoho Projects Now Integrated With Google Apps

Web-based productivity suite Zoho has continued to integrate its products with Google in order to make it easier to use Gmail and Zoho apps simultaneously. Last summer, Zoho, a web-based software suite that includes document, project and invoicing management tools, integrated Google and Yahoo sign-ins, allowing users to sign into Zoho using a Google or Yahoo account. And over the summer, Zoho is launched sign-in integration with Google Apps, letting users login to Zoho using their Google Apps credentials. Today, Zoho’s project collaboration product, Zoho Projects, will become an extended application to Google Apps.

Zoho Projects is a team collaboration and project management application that allows teams to plan, track and collaborate on everyday activities and big projects with external customers. With the new integration, Google Apps users can login to Zoho Projects using their Google Apps sign-in info. Users can then upload their documents from Google Docs to Zoho Projects directly. Any tasks, meetings or activities in Zoho Project will automatically bee updated in Google Calendar. And Zoho Projects gadgets can be embedded within Gmail, iGoogle and any other OpenSocial compatible sites.

The integration comes on the heels of the initial roll out of Google’s own all-in-one, futuristic collaboration tool, Google Wave. But despite facing competition from the big guns like Microsoft and Google, Zoho continues to remain as a player in the document management space thanks to continuous innovations and iterations to its products. It’s almost reminiscent of Salesforce.com’s strategy.

In fact, because of this highly competitive landscape, integrations are vital to the software’s success as an application suite. Recently, Zoho launched integration with Microsoft Sharepoint as well as with Microsoft Access. Zoho’s project management application, Zoho Projects 2.0, also added the capability to import existing projects from MS Project, Microsoft’s project management desktop software. And Zoho also launched a forum tool, called Zoho Discussions. It looks like the startup’s strategy is paying off—Zoho has been able to accumulate 2 million users in just 4 years.