It might surprise you to learn that Eric Yuan, the master behind Zoom, has a long-standing relationship with Cisco. Back in 1997, he left his home in Beijing to become the lead engineer for Webex, a video conferencing company that was purchased by Cisco in 2007. For a while, Yuan acted as a VP for the Collaborative side of Cisco, helping to push the organisation forward into the future of UC. However, eventually, he left to begin a video conferencing experience of his own, and that was the start of Zoom.
While Zoom hasn’t been around for nearly as long as Cisco, that hasn’t stopped it from racing all the way to a leadership position in the UC market. Today, Zoom is growing at a rate even faster than the video conferencing industry itself. According to one study, Zoom grew by 300% in 2016 alone. While IDC suggests that Cisco is the biggest player in the market, followed quickly by Polycom and Huawei, Zoom could be driving straight to the head of the pack.
Zoom Benefits from Customer-Focused Products
Yuan announced in an interview that he didn’t feel comfortable with Cisco’s management of WebEx when he left in 2011. He felt that he didn’t get to see enough happy customers as a result of all his hard work. Since Cisco’s and Yuan’s vision were very different, there was nothing for him to do but leave the company, and start his own venture. Yuan feels that Zoom is now growing rapidly thanks to their quality, features, simplicity, and price.
It’s not just the interest in Zoom that’s growing, but the team itself too. Zoom hired about 114 people in the second quarter of 2017, and offices are sprouting up everywhere from San Jose to Kansas City. In fact, the brand is even hiring some of their DevOps engineers from competitors like Polycom and Cisco. According to Yuan, the employees are jumping ship because they believe in Zoom as a simple and effective product.
Zoom Keeps Gathering Interest
As new developments in the Zoom portfolio, including VR and AI integrations, continue to excite customers, investors are beginning to show interest. Yuan stated that they had already announced $145.5 million in investment towards their new products and services.
Though we can only guess at Zoom’s plan for the future, and how they hope to compete against giants like Cisco in the future, it seems that the brand is focusing on pursuing numerous growth vectors at once. They’re boosting their US focus on productivity, pushing through into Europe and Australia, and innovating new product lines with AR, and AI too. At the same time, the business claims to stay true to its value of community care.
While, for now, Cisco appears to be holding onto the top spot in the UC industry, if it’s growth per year stays at 6.4%, while Zoom sees numbers like 300%, we’re sure to see some changes pretty soon. The war of video giants is changing, and there’s a new competitor on the playing field.
