Telecom
Zoho Boosts Competitive Opportunity for Global Businesses with Launch of New Cutting Edge Technology
Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, on Wednesday introduced five new apps, three new services and seven major platform enhancements in Zoho One, the operating system for business.
The new release empowers businesses to solve disjointed data challenges and close communications gaps across silos, so organizations can become more productive, adapt more quickly to remote and hybrid work models, and become poised for growth.
“The experience that employees, customers, partners, and suppliers get when dealing with businesses is typically a reflection of how that business and its systems are structured internally. Today, the majority of systems are disconnected as a result of siloed solutions offered by vendors,” said Hyther Nizam, President MEA, Zoho Corp.
“Unification of a business requires unification of the underlying systems, which can then provide a truly unified experience, internally and externally, along with unified insights.
“Zoho One was created with this vision and keeps expanding its unbeatable value with new additions and improvements year over year.”
Since its release in 2017, over 40,000 organizations have chosen Zoho One as their operating system.
In 2021, Zoho One witnessed a 60% y-y customer growth with the average number of apps used by businesses rising to 21. It’s the top-selling product for Zoho in Nigeria.
Zoho One aims to resolve operational, digitization, and retention challenges that businesses encounter. The latest additions are designed to support a hybrid work model and experience that would enable businesses to scale even in unpredictable times, while allowing easy customisation and personalisation of workplaces to enhance the user experience.
They are packed with services that bolster collaborative productivity, employee experience, and introduce applications that bridge the distance between employees, employers, and teams, in turn preparing businesses for the future.
Additionally, innovations like embedded and conversational BI, DataPrep, Work Graph and Enetrprise Search allow users to predict and provide unified, real-time insights from across different departments, enabling confident decision-making.
The new services now included in Zoho One are:
• Work Graph: Zoho’s new back-end service, an industry-first for business software, maps interactions between people, resources, systems and processes by studying signals and their strength across the board to build a business-wide work graph that is specific to each individual within the organization. The result of a work graph will be seen in the day-to-day productivity of users across various apps.
• Org Dictionary: Another industry-first, this new organization-wide service offers a central dictionary for the entire organization. It automatically incorporates the organization’s employee name and other sources offering a central, consistent diction across various Zoho applications and users.
• Mobile Application Management (MAM): With remote work now persistent, Zoho One now includes enterprise-grade Mobile App Management capabilities. Admins can easily add and manage all of their users’ devices for better insight and control of provisioning, specific app permissions and policies, locking and wiping devices remotely, and more, to support employee mobility and flexibility.
The new apps included in Zoho One are:
• Zoho Learn: Organizations now have a learning management tool that enables interactive training programmes and assessments with Zoho’s course builder. Online centralization of company information, training programmes, and more, gives businesses a better way to nurture employee growth.
• Zoho Lens: To facilitate better communication and collaboration in a remote-work environment, Zoho Lens provides remote assistance and guidance to employees through augmented reality (AR) via real-time AR annotation, VoIP, text chat, and more.
• TeamInbox: Teams use this shared email inbox to eliminate task duplication and streamline email conversations in one central location.
• Zoho DataPrep: This is a self-service data preparation and management tool. Whether users are preparing data from third-party apps or other sources, DataPrep, powered by machine learning, can help business users integrate, model, cleanse, transform, enrich, and catalogue data, as well as integrate with Zoho Analytics or a third-party for new-found insights.
• Zoho Commerce: The addition of Zoho Commerce enables retailers to easily build online shops with the tools needed to construct a website, accept orders, track inventory, process payments, manage shipping, market their brand, and analyze data. Zoho Commerce also integrates with third-party payment gateways.
The platform enhancements include:
• Embedded and Conversational BI: Zoho One now features embedded and conversational analytics enabling decision makers to drill down into their data and glean cross-departmental insights, all through natural language commands using Zia Insights. By providing 1,500+ pre-built analytics reports and dashboards, critical business decisions can be made with greater precision and speed.
• Enterprise Search: Zoho’s actionable, organization-wide search, which is powered by Zia, can now understand natural language requests. Natural language-powered search will lead to more accurate data discovery across teams and functions.
• Unified Console, Dashboards, and Smart-Stack UI: Employees are now able to see their apps, services, and dashboards in one view with centralization across calendars, dashboards, navigation, and more.
• Customizable Dashboard with Pre-Built Widgets: Widgets encapsulating data across the organization can be aggregated together in a custom dashboard. This provides users visibility across the organization in a single view with the ability to drill down just one click away.
• Integration with Telephony Providers: Recognizing that businesses value flexibility in choosing apps that serve their specific needs, the Zoho One platform already integrates with 1,000+ third party solutions on Zoho Marketplace and now extends integration with 100+ telephony providers to enable seamless communications between stakeholders.
Zoho One also offers a deep ecosystem that extends and integrates, including a comprehensive platform for developers and business users to create, extend, and integrate. The platform includes newly-released no-code tool, Canvas, low-code tool, Zoho Creator, and pro-code platform, Catalyst.
Pricing:
Pricing starts at NGN 7800 per employee, per month. For comprehensive pricing information, please go to: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/
Zoho Privacy Pledge
Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. More than 70 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit https://www.zoho.com/privacy.html
MTN Nigeria Communications Plc has joined other professionals across media, technology, and business gathered in Lagos for the Swish Fusion Tech and Media Summit.
Themed ‘Africa: Big Wins & New Breaks’, the summit drew thousands of attendees and featured more than 40 speakers exploring the intersection of innovation, regulation, and economic growth across the continent.
Among the sessions, MTN Nigeria presented a detailed look at the company’s ongoing 5G deployment efforts and its role in shaping enterprise infrastructure.
Njideka Jack, senior manager for Partnerships in MTN’s Enterprise Business Division, shared details of the investments, reiterating the company’s commitment to delivering high-quality 5G-powered services.
The company’s 5G rollout timeline began in 2022 with license acquisition from the Nigerian Communications Commission. In 2023, MTN moved into pilot testing and infrastructure investment.
By 2024, coverage had expanded to key cities and business hubs.
The company now plans to extend access to more underserved areas throughout 2025 while deepening collaboration with OEMs and regulators.
Beyond the rollout itself, Jack also spoke on the potential of private 5G networks for Nigerian enterprises.
With the ability to offer secure, high-speed, low-latency connectivity, these networks are increasingly being adopted in manufacturing, healthcare, education, and logistics sectors.
The summit’s broader agenda reflected a similar sense of urgency around Africa’s digital future.
Panels and breakout sessions tackled topics ranging from mobile-first product design and regulatory frameworks to the rise of AI in content creation and the realities of funding early-stage tech ventures on the continent.
Speakers from companies like Jumia, Stears and local startups provided perspectives on both the barriers and breakthroughs in building scalable African solutions.
The sessions also sparked conversations about how African businesses are adapting to consumer behaviour shifts and infrastructure limitations.
Pan African Towers (PAT), a Nigerian infrastructure provider serving 9mobile and Spectranet, has appointed Echezona Osi as chief executive officer.
Echezona Osi
Adefolarin Ogunsanya, company’s, board chairman, explained in a statement that Osi would succeed Oladipo Badru, whose tenure lasted nine months in acting CEO position. Osi has more than 28 years of experience in the telecommunications sector across various regions of Africa.
Prior to his appointment as CEO, he had served as the head of network deployment at Airtel Nigeria, operations director and chief technical information officer at MIC Tanzania, chief technology officer roles at IPT PowerTech Nigeria, Rhino Niger Networks and Biswal Nigeria.
He obtained a degree in electrical/ electronic engineering from the University of Benin and a postgraduate diploma in data science and business analytics from the University of Texas.
Companies sending bulk international text messages, also known as Application-to-Person (A2P) messages, will now have apply for a licence that costs N10 million.
This is part of new rules introduced by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) aimed at cleaning up the system, fighting fraud, blocking spam messages and stopping money from leaving the country unchecked.
These A2P messages are the kind customers get from banks, online stores, hospitals and political campaigns, automated texts sent from apps to their phones.
According to the commission, the bulk international text message system has been poorly regulated, allowing misuse and invasion of privacy.
“The International SMS Service Ecosystem in Nigeria has not been fully brought under regulatory control. It has been observed that the excessive use of the Short Message Service has led to fraud, spam and illegal activities,” the NCC said.
The regulator warned that without action, the problem would worsen as more people use mobile phones and digital services.
To solve this, the NCC is creating a central platform, or gateway, through which all international bulk text messages must pass through.
The agency said this would help to monitor messages in real time, ensure proper fees are paid, and make sure the money stays in Nigeria where it can contribute to the economy.
As part of the incoming change, service providers must follow strict rules, including strong data protection, spam filters, and message encryption.
Also, they must also work with local mobile networks and make sure all messages come from a verified sender
The NCC warned that any message without a proper sender ID will be blocked and not delivered to users.
To protect users from unwanted texts, the new rules say companies must get clear permission before sending any promotional content.
The rule also says people must also be able to choose whether they want to receive such messages or not.
Companies are now required to keep records of all messages for at least six months and must clearly state all charges involved.
The NCC said fees for help requests, cancellations, or service info must be transparent and not include hidden charges.
The commission will issue licences to several providers to encourage healthy competition but may limit new licences if needed.
Only companies that show they can stop fraud and safely deliver messages will be allowed to operate. They must also regularly report their message traffic and finances to the NCC.
It warned that any company that breaks the rules risks getting fined, suspended, or having its licence revoked.
Offences like charging illegal tariffs, ignoring security rules, or avoiding taxes will be punished, the NCC said.
The commission added that the new rules follow the Nigerian Data Protection Act 2023 and support the federal government’s goal of strengthening cybersecurity and controlling Nigeria’s digital space.
The framework will also be reviewed from time to time to keep up with new technology and market trends.
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