Zoom is More than just a Video Communications Service

Rob Scott speaks to Zoom's Global CIO, Harry Moseley, about their latest updates

Looking Back at Zoomtopia

In October, Zoom held its massive annual user conference, Zoomtopia – but for the first time, in an all-virtual format. Given that virtual events have increased by approximately 1,000% this year, we were excited to know how Zoomtopia played out in its new avatar:

“It was fantastic. It was all virtual this year, like so many other events around the planet. That was absolutely terrific – you know, small things like imposing the virtual background on the entire stage was absolutely brilliant. Absolutely terrific!”Moseley said.

For more information on Zoomtopia 2020, please check out Rob’s coverage. You could also take a look at scheduled events for 2021, including the next Zoomtopia and others.

Unravelling the Core Mission Statement at Zoom

During the interview, Rob mentioned an intriguing statement that Eric Yuan, Zoom CEO, made during the event: “Zoom is more than just a video communication service.”

Moseley elaborated on this, telling us exactly how Zoom adds value to users’ lives in so many different ways.

“When you think of Zoom, it’s much more (as Eric said), much more than just a video communications platform. Rather, it is actually a platform – think about a platform, you think about meeting, so we can meet like this, you can meet one on one, but you can, you know, do over 50,000 people,” he explained. He went on to talk about four recent additions to the Zoom portfolio:

Customizable SDKs

“People can take the great Zoom technology and embed it into their proprietary applications. Unbeknownst to people, and they don’t know they’re using Zoom, but they’re using a proprietary app. You look at HSBC in the UK doing Zoom mortgages as an example,” said Moseley.

OnZoom

“Over the last 10-11 months, as we’ve been living through this pandemic era, many of the usual in-person events have become virtual. Many of the brick and mortar businesses have gone virtual. And so, we want to enable those people who are professionals – like a yoga professional, a baking professional, your music or cooking classes – and enable them to continue their businesses in the virtual world by leveraging the Zoom platform,” Moseley discussed the intentions and drivers for OnZoom.

End-to-end encryption

“If you look at the end-to-end encryption that we just released, people can do secure transactions whether it’s Goldman Sachs making a $2.9 billion stock offering for SoftBank over the Zoom platform, M&A transactions, board meetings, or the healthcare sector. This is part of the battle,” he added.

Zoom Apps

“The traditional model is: now we’re having a conversation, and during the conversation, we need to go and open a document somewhere. But with Zoom Apps, you are able to go to your file store, bring up the agenda, make the meeting notes while you’re actually in the meeting, go to your CRM application, and bring the pipeline right into the meeting, without having to go here and there to then share content,” Moseley explained.

Apps have emerged as a popular idea for collaboration platforms; be sure to check out our coverage on a similar offering from Teams.

Zoom’s holistic vision is to equip professionals with the tools they need during this crisis and beyond – it is about “empowering people to accomplish more,” as Moseley put it.

“If you’re in the medical industry, empowering medical professionals to treat more patients so that their patients can actually accomplish more in their lives. If you’re in the transportation business, if you’re in the hospitality business, if you’re in the retail industry, it’s empowering those people to actually accomplish more in their business. So that’s what this is all about.”

Is Zoom Headed the UCaaS Way?

There has been a lot of talk about whether Teams is UCaaS, and the recent Gartner MQ left very little doubt. Indeed, UCaaS seems to be the logical progressions for video conferencing and collaboration tools with users eager to complete more tasks on their favourite platforms.

Rob pointed out that Zoom enjoys a 22% attachment rate and was recognised as a Leader on the Gartner MQ for UCaaS 2020.

“As a new entrant, to end up in the top-right quadrant of the MQ as a Leader in the space…we’re very proud about that,” Moseley said. This is a remarkable achievement, given that the journey has taken only two years.

Moseley looked back at when he first joined the company – and Yuan was keenly focused on UCaaS from the very beginning.

“If I go back almost three years ago, when I was talking to Eric about joining Zoom, his vision at that time was UCaaS. We always had different communication tools but the ability to take any one of those tools, whether it is video or voice or chat, and be able to transition from one medium to another medium in a seamless and frictionless fashion – that is the true UCaaS vision,” said Moseley.

Imagine you are a business leader and are conducting a chat session with your team. You might want to share content, spin up a voice or video call, or initiate a voice call and elevate that to a video – without having to switch apps. That’s what Zoom as UCaaS is all about, according to Moseley, something that he firmly believes is “absolutely incredibly important.”

One of the ways Zoom enables this is via Zoom Chat.

“We love our chat! It’s very easy to use, especially in this distributed workforce. Now, I have a bunch of tiles up here for people that I don’t frequently interact with. So, you know, if Gary asked me a question or shared something with me, I could see it instantly. If I need to get to Andrea about something, or I need to get to Sanci about something – I have all these tiles across the top of my screen, I can see their presence,” Moseley told us.

“It’s all very easy, almost like they’re sitting there. You know, could you imagine like, you know, if you go into the office, and we were all sitting in an open area, I could look in, I can see people and I can lean across and say – hey Mike, quick question,” he explained how the user experience recreates the convenience of a physical office.

Next, we spoke about the reasons why Yuan founded the company and how this objective gained new dimensions in 2020.

Video is the New Voice in 2021 and Beyond

Back in 2011, when Zoom was founded, our technology stack was in the middle of a fundamental change. We were already a mobile-first world, fast transitioning into a video-first world. And in 2021, everyone understands what that actually means, said Moseley, which is that video is the new voice.

There are three reasons for this trend:

Body language is vital to how humans communicate – “I’m talking to you, I’m looking at you, and you’re nodding. That’s your voice talking to me. That’s your body talking to me. Your body language is super important,” said Moseley
Focus and attention is easier with video – “You know, during voice conversations, people tend to multitask, they get distracted, and they don’t listen,” he added
Communication happens faster through video than voice – “When I’m talking to a partner on the other side of the planet, and I ask a really hard question, I don’t necessarily want to hear the answer. I want to see the answer. And when you ask people a hard question, you can tell instantly by their facial reaction how hard a question that is for them, whether they’re prepared to answer that or not,” he further pointed out

On Making the World a Smaller, and Hopefully a Better, Place

When the pandemic hit, Zoom was among the top platforms helping to sustain connectivity in both enterprise and consumer scenarios. In March, enterprise apps (particularly video conferencing apps) saw a staggering 62 million downloads, with Zoom heading the pack.

Zoom was downloaded 20 times more than its Q4 2019 average in the UK – indicating users’ eagerness to stay connected during these times.

Now, as communication and collaboration technology matures, Zoom plans on further shrinking the world and democratizing access, starting with OnZoom.

“We’re going to create the tools necessary to make it really easy for you to bring your cooking lessons online, your yoga classes online, and bring your piano lessons online. It’s limited right now to the US, but when you think about a platform like this, there’s global potential, and it makes the world a much smaller place. Let’s say I love cooking Indian food. Imagine somebody from India is offering cooking lessons for Indian food – that would be pretty cool!” Moseley said.

In other words, OnZoom wouldn’t just be another productivity aid. It would also act as a global marketplace for service discovery and consumption, where customers could potentially generate revenues directly.

“You could take a yoga class from somebody in Europe because you like to do yoga late at night or early in the morning. As you think about it from the business perspective, you think about a yoga instructor instead of just doing a class for 10 students in a yoga room, you could have a hundred students from all over the world”

Virtual communication and events also have another positive impact: it is better for the environment. “One of the amazing facts that Eric shared at Zoomtopia was that January through September, our customers achieved approximately 40 tonnes of carbon savings as a consequence of Zoom Meetings. That’s just in the first nine months of this year,” Moseley shared with us.

On a personal level, this has reduced travel needs dramatically, freeing up that time for other value-adding activities either in one’s personal or professional life.

“I was due to fly to San Francisco [in March] but the event I was going to was cancelled because of COVID-19. So I haven’t been on a plane since February the 25th. I used to be on three or four flights a week prior to COVID-19. We have this amazing platform, and we can actually conduct business, really big business over, over video. So, not flying has been, sort of, a time to sit back and reflect. A little bit more time back to our families…this is definitely a consequence for me,” he added.

Moseley predicts that even after the pandemic, video will continue to dominate, replacing a sizable portion of business travel. “I expect, as we come out of this pandemic, to travel maybe three or four times a month.”

Powerful, reliable video – and eventually UCaaS – could fundamentally transform our approach to work-life balance, repositioning productivity as we learn from our experiences during COVID-19.

“I’ve taken up tennis. I’ve taken up mountain bike riding. I have been improving my cooking skills. I can remember the five times that my wife and I have been out for dinner over the last 10 months – so, I’ve cooked an awful lot of dinners! It’s a bit of a transition from work to home because I’m working at home. But put on some music, open some wine, and life is good…,” he shared a glimpse into what his day-on-day work-life balance looks like at the moment.

Like Zoom’s Harry Moseley, we have all reaped the benefits of video communication through this challenging period and will continue to do so in the upcoming quarters. Zoom’s roadmap features interesting new updates and releases that will elevate this experience to a new level.

Please watch this space as we bring you the latest updates from Zoom and other UCaaS and Collaboration heavyweights, and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and support more such conversations!

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