Zoho Corp., which develops a wide range of business productivity applications delivered as a service, today updated its low-code Zoho Creator Platform with features intended to support a broader range of uses.

Zoho, which claims its low-code suite enables deployment up to 10 times as fast as competing platforms, said it’s aiming to appeal to both business users and information technology developers. The Creator Platform combines application development, integrations, process automation, business intelligence and analytics while enabling IT organizations to manage security, compliance and governance.

A major new feature of this version is an included business intelligence and analytics engine that supports sophisticated functions like predictive analytics, data alerts, what-if analysis, data blending and conversational analytics in a low-code context.

Updates to the dashboard include features for creating, integrating, analyzing and managing applications along with improved interoperability between elements and controls for IT organizations to use in setting up large-scale citizen development programs.

Zoho’s artificial intelligence AI assistant, Zia, now enables developers to import data from anywhere, cleanse and transform with one click, build data models and automatically detect data relationships. Tasks such as predictive analytics, keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, optical character recognition and object detection are built into the drag-and-drop user interface, Zoho said.

A drag-and-drop process builder graphically constructs an online replica of a business process by enabling users to specify each step, assign responsibilities and automate actions based on pre-set conditions.

Serverless functions have been enhanced in Zoho’s Deluge language as well as applications written in Java or Node.js. Unified data modeling helps developers establish secure data transfer by automating data integration protocols within a single data architecture with support for more than 600 plug-and-play connectors.

A status dashboard reports on recent executions, success stats and top connections for better error detection. Developers can also now launch development, testing or production environments with a single click, enabling changes to be made without disturbing applications in production.

Governance has been improved with role-based access controls, audit trails with backup options, dashboards for managing users, a billing dashboard and various personalization options.

Pricing starts at $25 per person.

Image: Zoho