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"Business is really picking up," Vegesna told CIO at the Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco. "This downturn might actually help the low-cost technology providers like us."

Zoho, which derives its name from the term "small office home office," launched back in 2005. It's a property of , a privately held company in India that handles IT support and data center maintenance. Because Zoho is a software as a service company, customers access its software over a Web browser and Zoho hosts all the information on its own servers.

For an upstart software vendor, . Many of the apps are available for free (for up to 10 users), while Zoho charges US$50 per user per year for every user thereafter. From a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation app that competes with Microsoft Office and , to customer relationship management (CRM) software for sales and marketing people that nibble at Salesforce.com's billion dollar business, Zoho and its 200 person developer team in India fearlessly create app after app, quickly sending them to market.

"They're going for the shotgun approach," says , a senior Forrester analyst who researches the economics of software vendors. "Pull out as many apps and products as you can, and see what happens."