ZohoDay 2026 - How Newcross Healthcare builds AI apps on a governed platform - while keeping AI hype at bay

In my ZohoDay 2026 podcast recap with Thomas Wieberneit, I touched on the persistent gap between where customers are at with AI - and where vendors are.

This is (somewhat) the case with Zoho as well. Zoho has articulated a bold vision of AI that includes model right-sizing, a context layer of governed data, a full AI stack, and data sovereignty.

Zoho argues that out-of-the-box LLMs are becoming commoditized, and that they've anticipated the market's de-valuation of software. I can understand why customers might be in a different place. Customers will look to Zoho to build that AI future, while they contend with industry challenges of their own.

On the other hand, we can learn plenty from customer realities. The customers that spoke at ZohoDay were all knee deep in some kind of data quality, harmonization, or analytics project - what I think of as 'AI readiness' initiatives. However, one ...