Zoho, the Google Apps competitor aimed at filling the needs of the enterprise space, has launched something unique in the market: unified search across their SaaS applications. In plain English that means Zoho users have a single way to search e-mail messages, documents, contacts, and other content managed by Zoho’s SaaS applications. Here’s the scoop on Zoho Search.

Right now, Zoho Search indexes Zoho Mail, Docs, Writer, Sheet, Show, Notebook, Contacts, Discussions and Organization Contacts, according to the official blog entry, with support for more applications coming soon. Results are grouped by application, and every result comes with useful information like if the message’s sender is on your contact list.

But the exciting part is the “actionable” element to the search, which means that you can reply to e-mails from the search results without having to launch the mail client or preview or share a document without having to launch the editor. Even better, the whole Zoho Search shebang is integrated right into the Zoho Business suite, the company claims.

It’s an intriguing concept, and one that enterprise SaaS productivity suite competitors like HyperOffice, LotusLive, and, yes, Google Apps are going to have to integrate sooner rather than later if they want to stay competitive. In fact, if I were Google, I would be embarrassed that Zoho found a better way to search and beat them at their own game.

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