Zoho has announced several new AI solutions for its ecosystem.
That ecosystem comprises AI tools integrated into the user experience, so they work in the background without the user even knowing it’s AI.
Yet, there are also default Zia Agents that cross Zoho’s products. Businesses can deploy these agents - often at no extra cost - to automate simple tasks or as "digital employees" within a system.
Zoho has built and hosted much of this AI on its own infrastructure, enabling the business to better manage costs and its roadmap.
Now, it has made several significant steps along this roadmap. Here are five of the highlights.
1. Zoho Launches Zia LLM
Zia LLM is a set of three large language models that Zoho has built in-house.
These models come with different parameter sizes:
- 1.3 billion parameters
- 2.6 billion parameters
- 7 billion parameters
Each model was trained separately, meaning that the two smaller models are not distilled versions of the larger seven billion model.
Zoho has promised that more models will be released in the future, too.
Why? To provide right-sized models that appropriately balance accuracy and cost.
Celebrating the launch, Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho, noted:
Our AI assistant (Zia) is already performing well with the new LLM. We like the progress we’re seeing.
Indeed, according to Vegesna, Zia LLM already performs better than LLama 2. However, the Zoho man admitted that it’s “not quite at the level” of LLama 3, yet!
Critically, Zoho customers won’t be limited to using only Zia LLM. The CRM giant also supports various third-party LLMs, including those from OpenAI, Google, and others.
If customers prefer to use those models, they can do so through the vendor’s AI Bridge.
Zia LLM will be one option within the AI Bridge, and businesses can choose what works best for them. In some cases, it may be a combination of these models used in sequence, depending on specific needs.
2. Zoho Builds an Agent Marketplace, Adds 25+ Agents
Zoho depicts a future where it develops and makes “hundreds” of contextually integrated agents available across its product lines.
These agents will complete tasks relevant to real-life organizational roles, including customer service, sales, and account management.
Now, Zoho has integrated 25+ new Zia Agents across its portfolio. Amongst these is a Customer Service Agent.
The agent takes inbound customer contacts, extracts the intent, and then either triages to a relevant rep on Zoho Desk or resolves them directly.
Yet, this is only one example. Many others are available via the new Zoho Marketplace, a dedicated place for its customers to implement first- and third-party AI agents across the Zoho ecosystem.
Already, the Marketplace includes AI agents to spot upsell and cross-sell opportunities, analyze deals, screen candidates, and more.
The vendor’s ecosystem comprises partners and independent software vendors (ISVs), which may post agents on the Marketplace alongside individual developers, who can build agents via the new-look Zoho AI Agent Studio…
