Zoho Corporation announces an important evolution of Zoho Analytics, its business intelligence (BI) solution, which incorporates new artificial intelligence capabilities to become an agentic analytics platform.
To do this, the company incorporates six artificial intelligence agents specialized in tasks such as data preparation, creation of models and analysis, visualization of results, programming and SQL generation. These agents are coordinated by Ask Zia, Zoho’s artificial intelligence assistant for business intelligence. Users can give instructions in natural language and Ask Zia selects the appropriate agents and combines their results.
«We are at the beginning of the next great leap in data analysis, where having a solid database will be the starting point for any agentic activity within business operations. However, agents cannot operate on data alone; they require a robust intelligence layer. “What we are introducing today in Zoho Analytics offers just that: a trusted, open and extensible intelligence layer, giving a company’s AI tools the context, metrics and governance needed to generate responses that users can trust,” says Sridhar Iyengar, general manager of Zoho in Europe.
Semantic layer and an ontological model
Among the main novelties are a semantic layer and an ontological model that allow companies to define, for example, what they consider income, how certain metrics are calculated or what relationships exist between different data sets. These definitions serve as the basis for analyzes performed by AI agents and are also available for external agents, applications, and workflows. In this way, the artificial intelligence present in the application can interpret the results in the specific context of each company and offer recommendations adapted to its operations.
Both the semantic layer and the ontological model are integrated directly into Zoho Analytics. Its setup requires no programming knowledge or a separate data platform or cloud data warehouse. Companies can create their own semantic models for different departments and, thanks to the open Apache Ossie standard, also use them outside of Zoho Analytics.
More than 30 new connectors for Zoho Analytics
Ask Zia preserves conversation history, so users don’t have to start from scratch with each new query. Businesses can choose between using Zoho’s own language model or an external one. In addition, they will now also be able to create their own AI agents and determine what tasks they are authorized to perform autonomously.
For its part, Zoho Analytics adds more than 30 new connectors to its more than 500 existing integrations, including Zoho ERP, SAP, PayPal, Adobe Commerce, Twilio, Notion and Intercom. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) allows external AI applications to access Zoho Analytics. Additionally, custom agents can be integrated into other applications and customer portals.
A centralized data catalog allows you to know where it comes from and what analyzes are based on it. Security and governance controls regulate access to information and facilitate oversight of AI agents. This way, administrators can see who uses the agents, what data they access, what responses they provide, and what costs different teams generate.
New AI agents and analytics can be tested before going into production and, if necessary, reverted to previous versions. External AI agents, applications, and workflows can also take advantage of the analytical capabilities and business context of Zoho Analytics. Additionally, agents can be integrated directly into other applications, maintaining existing access permissions and security policies.
“With this release, Zoho brings together several elements needed to develop scalable and governed agentic analytics, including native semantic and ontological layers, governance and monitoring capabilities, and the ability to deploy these capabilities both integrated into applications and independently using MCP. Its stated commitment to openness and interoperability should help organizations leverage contextualized information for their decisions,” says Megha Kumar, research vice president of Analytics and Artificial Intelligence at IDC.
Zoho Analytics Platform Plans and Pricing
The update adds more than 50 new capabilities, including new chart types, customizable reports and forecasting tools, as well as improved data management, AI monitoring and deployment capabilities. A Data Science Studio environment offers support for Jupyter Notebooks and PMML models.
In the future, analytics will also take into account changes in business data and the results of actions taken by agents. In the longer term, Zoho Analytics is set to become the foundation of an integrated data platform with data lakehouse capabilities.
The Zoho Analytics platform offers four cloud plans: Basic, Standard, Premium and Enterprise
Zoho Analytics is used daily by 100,000 companies around the world and is available in the cloud, on-premises and in hybrid environments. Cloud version updates are now available, while preview versions of the pixel-perfect reports, ontology layer, and semantic model will be progressively deployed globally over the next four to eight weeks. The on-premise version update will be available during the first quarter of 2027.
Despite the important new features, Zoho Analytics maintains its current rates. The platform offers four cloud plans: Basic, from 24 euros per month; Standard, from 48 euros per month; Premium, from 115 euros per month; and Enterprise, from 445 euros per month. All prices correspond to the annual billing method. The Basic plan includes two users, capacity for 500,000 data rows, and 10,000 Zoho LLM credits. Additionally, all plans now include credits to use Zoho language models.
