Zoho has launched a new version of Zoho Analytics, Zoho’s self-service BI and analytics platform. Among more than 100 other enhancements, Zoho Analytics has developed powerful new AI and ML capabilities, enabling diagnostic insights, predictive analytics, automated reporting, and dashboard generation.
Additionally, the platform now includes a custom ML model building studio, seamless integration with OpenAI, over 25 new data connectors, and third-party BI platform extensions. This new release has added power, intelligence, and flexibility to serve a broader range of businesses and users than competitors in the market.
“Zoho Analytics launched in 2009 as Zoho Reports, long before technology had caught up with Zoho’s vision for business intelligence,” said Clarence Rozario, Director of Product Management, Zoho BI & Analytics Platform. “Since then, Zoho has made significant investments in automation, no-code/low-code development, third-party integration, machine learning, and Zia, our in-house AI engine. The latest version of Zoho Analytics is one of the first solutions in the company to leverage each of these investments over the past few decades. The result is a democratized platform that is powerful, intelligent, and flexible enough to benefit everyone.”
The company’s BI platform, which was built from scratch in India, is leveraged by 30 lakh users globally. In India, Zoho Analytics reported a 67% growth in new revenue, making it the second-largest market for the offering. This growth is primarily driven by mid-sized and large enterprises in sectors such as information technology, financial services, manufacturing and retail.
Today, businesses face three primary data challenges: the increasing velocity and diversity of data, the need for robust data management and governance, and the growing complexity and dynamism of analytical needs. To address these needs and meet this demand, Zoho Analytics has advanced in four key areas: Data management, AI, data science and machine learning, and extensibility. Below are the platform’s highlights in these categories.
Powerful data management center
To enable businesses to deliver high-quality and well-managed data, it is imperative to create a robust data management center. Therefore, the Analytics platform has expanded its data management capabilities, adding Stream Analytics, ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) data pipelines, and metrics layer enhancements to the mix to ensure broader access to more accurate data for businesses.
The platform has expanded its portfolio of over 500 data connectors by adding Stream Analytics, along with 25 other new data connectors. This will enable users to extract real-time data streams, enhancing their ability to consume, analyze, and leverage data. Additionally, business users can now build and manage complex ETL data pipelines within the platform. Users can easily build end-to-end data pipelines using Zoho Analytics’ visual builder. They will now also be able to build custom transformations and ML models using the platform’s Python Code Studio, allowing developers to integrate these customizations within the platform.
To further simplify data transformation, Zoho’s AI assistant, Ask Zia, will enable users to benefit from natural language processing. Users will also be able to access robust data management with automatic versioning and a new Sandbox environment. The platform now allows businesses and users to orchestrate data pipelines using Zoho Flow and manage, monitor, and orchestrate pipelines in one place. With the new unified metrics layer, users can define, standardize, monitor, control access, and catalog all business metrics in a single pane of glass. The platform also extends to serve as Headless BI, allowing data applications to consume the same metrics in real-time for consistent and trusted insights.
Business Intelligence (BI) enriched with GenAI
Zoho Analytics has introduced generative AI capabilities on the BI platform to accelerate insight adoption across a wide range of user profiles. The platform now enables diagnostic analytics, where Zoho’s AI-powered automated analytics engine, Zia Insights, now provides diagnostic analytics contextually, bringing actionable intelligence to the platform. With enhancements to Ask Zia, Zoho’s multilingual AI co-pilot for natural language queries, users can now also trigger actions and create custom data models. Ask Zia can also be leveraged in chat channels, including Microsoft Teams, to generate deeper, faster, and more contextual insights and actions.
Additionally, Zoho Analytics has added Auto-Analysis, enabling automated generation of AI-powered metrics, reports, and dashboards. Additionally, Zoho Analytics’ seamless OpenAI integration, enabled by Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), generates more relevant and accurate query answers. With OpenAI APIs with Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption, users can more easily find public datasets and create formula and Structured Query Language (SQL) queries. All these AI-powered enhancements bring more effective, contextual, accessible, and intelligent insights and actions to the platform.
Data Science and Machine Learning Studio
Zoho Analytics now enables users to build powerful custom machine learning models for specific business needs with Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio. The studio offers AutoML, a no-code wizard, to easily build custom machine learning models. With feature engineering, hyperparameter tuning, and comprehensive model analysis, it allows users to train, test, benchmark, deploy, and manage models. Zoho Analytics also offers Code Studio, the platform’s new integrated Python code environment, where users can build custom machine learning models as well as import Python models or externally created libraries that can be run within the platform.
Platform Extensibility
Zoho Analytics is now more extensible, with new features like its no-code builder for data connectors, actions framework, BI framework, and client SDKs.
Zoho Analytics is a composable platform on which any analytics solution can be built. The new BI framework allows businesses to consolidate insights from multiple BI platforms, such as Power BI and Tableau, into a single, easily accessible and searchable analytics portal. Access to the portal can be controlled with granular access permissions. Additionally, in Zoho Analytics, users can trigger actionable workflows, including URL and Webhook actions.
The platform seamlessly integrates with Zoho Flow, enabling over 500 app triggers. Zoho Analytics offers a no-code data connector builder, allowing users to create custom connectors to import data from any custom app. Partners can also create data connectors that can be published and sold on Zoho Marketplace. The new update brings over 100 enhancements, including new visualizations, improved dashboard creation, audit and admin controls, redesigned mobile apps, right-to-left (RTL) support, and more.
