Zoho likes to position itself as the enterprise-targeted SaaS competitor to Google Apps, but it still knows that if you can’t beat them, join them. That’s why Zoho takes their Google integration a step further with Gmail contextual gadgets. The move brings Zoho CRM, Zoho Invoice, and Zoho Projects into the conversation. Here are some details.

By integrating with the three Zoho apps, according to the official blog entry, you can do things like see if a message sender is in your CRM system and view their details without leaving the page, or view all invoices sent to and payments received from a contact, or create projects from a message and turn emails into actionable tasks.

The VAR Guy keeps a close eye on Zoho because when it comes to enterprise SaaS, they seem to have figured out what the IT channel needs: cheap and easy to deploy applications that go beyond word processing and spreadsheets. By integrating with Gmail right in the message pane, I can only imagine that the Zoho Apps package gets more attractive to enterprise Google users – it may be the best of both worlds.

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