Zoho unveils AI-rich enhanced Zoho Analytics version for self-service BI

Zoho, 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 analysis, automated reports, and dashboard generation.

Additionally, the platform now includes a custom ML model-building studio, seamless integration with OpenAI, 25+ new data connectors, and third-party BI platform extensions. This new version has added power, intelligence, and flexibility to serve a broader range of businesses and users than competitors in the market.

“Zoho Analytics was launched in 2009 as Zoho Reports, long before technology had caught up to Zoho’s vision for business intelligence,” said Clarence Rozario, Director of Product Management, Zoho BI & Analytics Platform. “Since then, Zoho has made considerable investments around 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 from the company that takes advantage of every one of these decades-long investments. The result is a democratised platform that is powerful, intelligent, and flexible enough to benefit everyone and anyone.”

The company’s BI platform, which has been built from the ground-up in India, is being leveraged by 30 lakh users, globally. In India, Zoho Analytics saw 67% growth in new revenue, making it the second largest market for the offering.  This growth is primarily driven by mid and large enterprises in sectors such as ITeS, Financial Services, Manufacturing, and Retail.

Today, businesses face three main data challenges: increasing data velocity and variety of data, the necessity for strong data management and governance, and the growing complexity and dynamism of analytical needs. To address these needs, and capture this demand, Zoho Analytics has advanced across four key areas: Data Management, AI, Data Science & Machine Learning, and Extensibility. Below are notable highlights of the platform across these categories.

To empower businesses to deliver high quality and properly governed data, it is imperative to build a robust data management hub. 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 500+ data connector portfolio by adding Stream Analytics, along with 25 other new data connectors. This will enable users to extract data streams in real-time, enhancing their ability to consume, analyse, and leverage data. Additionally, business users can now create and manage complex ETL data pipelines within the platform. Users can create end-to-end data pipelines easily using Zoho Analytics’ visual builder. ‌They will now also build Custom Transforms and ML models using the platform’s Python Code Studio, enabling developers to bring these customisations within the platform.

To simplify the transformation of data further, Ask Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant, will enable natural language processing for users. Users will also be able to access robust data management with an automatic versioning system and a new Sandbox environment. The platform now also enables 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, standardise, monitor, access control, and catalogue all business metrics in a single pane. The platform also extends to serve in a Headless BI mode, allowing data applications to consume the same metrics in real-time for consistent and dependable insights.

Zoho Analytics has introduced Generative AI capabilities across the BI platform to accelerate the adoption of insights for a broad spectrum of user personas. The platform now enables Diagnostic Analysis, wherein Zoho’s AI-powered, automated insights engine, Zia Insights, now provides diagnostic analytics contextually, bringing decision intelligence into the platform. With enhancements in Ask Zia, Zoho’s multi-lingual Natural Language Querying AI copilot, users can now also trigger actions and build custom data models. Ask Zia can also be leveraged within IM channels, including Microsoft Teams, to generate deeper, faster, and more contextual insights and actions.

Additionally, Zoho Analytics has added Auto Analysis, enabling AI-powered automated metrics, report, and dashboard generation. Furthermore, Zoho Analytics’ seamless OpenAI integration—enabled by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)—drives more relevant and accurate query responses. Using OpenAI APIs with Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) encryption, users can more easily find public datasets and create formula & Structured Query Language (SQL) queries. All these AI-powered enhancements deliver more efficient, contextual, accessible, and intelligent insights and actions to the platform.

Zoho Analytics now empowers users to build powerful custom machine learning models for specific business requirements, with the Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio. This Studio offers AutoML, a no-code assistant, to build custom ML models easily. With ‌feature engineering, hyperparameter tuning, and comprehensive model analysis, it enables users to ‌train, test, compare, deploy, and manage models. Zoho Analytics also features Code Studio, the platform’s new integrated Python code environment where users can create custom ML models as well as import Python models or externally built libraries, which can be executed within the platform.

Zoho Analytics is now more deeply extendable, with new capabilities such as its no-code builder for data connectors, actions framework, BI fabric, and client Software Development Kits (SDKs).

Zoho Analytics is a composable platform on which any analytical solution can be built. The new BI fabric enables businesses to consolidate insights from multiple BI platforms, such as Power BI and Tableau, onto one, easily accessible and searchable analytics portal. Access to the portal can be controlled with fine-grained access permissions. Moreover, within Zoho Analytics, users can trigger actionable workflows, including URL and Webhook actions.

The platform integrates seamlessly with Zoho Flow, enabling 500+ app triggers. Zoho Analytics features a no-code data connector builder, allowing users to create custom connectors, to bring data from any custom application. Partners can also build data connectors that can be published and sold on Zoho Marketplace. The new update features over 100+ enhancements, including new visualisations, enhanced dashboard building, audit and admin controls, revamped mobile apps, Right-to-Left (RTL) support, and more.