Zoho Launches Remotely in Response to COVID-19 Outbreak

In the wake of the global COVID-19 outbreak, business software provider Zoho launched Remotely, a collaboration and communication platform combining many of the company's point solutions. Zoho Remotely includes 11 of the vendor's applications (primarily those included in the Zoho Workplace product suite): Cliq, Meeting, ShowTime, WorkDrive, Projects, Sprints, Assist, Lens, Writer, Sheet, and Show. 

Like many companies affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak, Zoho’s workforce will be working remotely until further notice. Zoho opened up in a blog about the rationale of behind Remotely’s launch:

“Until the coronavirus (COVID-19) has been brought under control, a majority of our 8,000-plus employees across 10-plus countries will be working from home. We’re able to make this shift quickly, in part, because our suite of apps were designed, specifically, to support and foster remote collaboration. Since more and more companies are adopting similar work from home (WFH) policies, we wanted to offer the same set of tools we use to everyone for free, during this time.”

It would be easy to misinterpret Remotely as an attempt to profit off the spike in remote workers during this crisis by drumming up good press. However, G2’s chief research officer Michael Fauscette has a lot of reason to think otherwise:

Zoho isn’t alone in providing free solutions to support remote work, either. Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and LogMeIn have all announced similar free collaboration solutions within the last week.