Zoho Creator Deploys Apps to Google App Engine

PLEASANTON, Calif.– Zoho today announced that Zoho Creator has been integrated with Google App Engine, enabling applications built with Zoho Creator to be deployed on Google’s infrastructure. The move effectively makes Zoho Creator an integrated development environment for Google App Engine that lets users deploy their applications on third-party cloud platforms.

A video tour explaining the process of deploying a Zoho Creator application on Google infrastructure is available at http://www.viddler.com/explore/Raju/videos/26/. Samples of Zoho Creator applications deployed on both Zoho and Google infrastructures provide a side-by-side comparison and can be found here:

Contact Organizer:

• Google App Engine Deployment
• Zoho Creator Deployment

Issue Manager:

• Google App Engine Deployment
• Zoho Creator Deployment

“We want to provide our users the choice to decide where to run the applications they build with Zoho Creator,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. “We don’t want to lock anybody into Zoho. Zoho CloudSQL gave users open access to their data. Now, we’re giving them open access to their application code, so it can run on other vendors’ infrastructure.”

Zoho Development, Google Deployment

Zoho Creator lets users easily create powerful, database-driven Web applications in minutes. Zoho Creator is an ideal solution for casual users who are not programmers yet who still want to create their own situated applications — small, situation-specific applications often needed immediately, on the fly.

Users can create highly customizable applications using simple drag and drop operations. Zoho Creator’s Form Builder, View Builder and Script Builder make it easy to create business applications in less time than with traditional database applications.

Now, an application created in Zoho Creator can be deployed on Zoho or on Google’s infrastructure via Google App Engine. Deployment on Zoho remains a one-click process, while deployment on Google involves the following steps:

1. From Zoho Creator, select the “Deploy in Google App Engine” option from the “More Actions” link. This converts the Zoho Creator application code into Python code supported by Google. Zoho provides that Python code to the user as a downloadable .ZIP file.
2. From Google App Engine, create a new application. In the “Application Identifier” field, use the same name as the name given to the Zoho Creator application.
3. Using the Google App Engine SDK, deploy the Zoho Creator application downloaded in step 1 to Google App Engine.

To date, users have created more than 130,000 applications in Zoho Creator. Most can be immediately deployed on Google App Engine. Zoho Creator applications running on Google continue to support features such as email notifications when data is added or modified by application users.

Vegesna said, “Zoho Creator is a great way for casual users to check out Google App Engine. They can create the applications using Zoho Creator and then take the Python code and run it on Google without any knowledge of Python. The Deluge language in Zoho Creator is flexible to generate code in any language and can easily support other languages in the future.”

For more information on Zoho, please visit www.zoho.com. To get breaking Zoho news, please visit and subscribe to the RSS feed at http://blogs.zoho.com/.

About Zoho

Zoho is a comprehensive suite of award-winning on-line business applications. Customers use Zoho to run their business processes, manage their information and be more productive while at the office or on the go, without having to worry about expensive or outdated hardware or software. To date, Zoho has launched 19 different applications — from CRM to Mail, Reports, and Wikis. Zoho has received numerous awards, including a 2008 PC World “25 Most Innovative Products Award” and a 2007 TechCrunch “Best Enterprise Start-up.”

Zoho is a division of AdventNet, a privately-held and profitable company. With headquarters in Pleasanton, CA and offices in Austin, New Jersey, London, Tokyo, and Beijing, AdventNet serves the technology needs of more than 40,000 customers worldwide. For more information about Zoho, please visit http://www.zoho.com/.