In the last few months, Zoom has been near-synonymous with communication in both the consumer and enterprise spaces. Now, as we look forward to a new year, Zoom is looking to strengthen its portfolio further, beyond just being a video conferencing platform. It has a host of new offerings up its sleeve, like OnZoom and Zoom Apps, even as it continues to strengthen its core capabilities with features like end-to-end encryption for Zoom video.
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We discuss:
- Why is Zoom more than just a video communications service?
- How important is UCaaS to the future of Zoom?
- What role does Zoom Chat play in unifying the portfolio?
- Are you moving towards a more platform approach with Zoom apps and APIs and have customers been asking for these capabilities?
- Zoom is a UCaaS MQ Leader now very impressive after such a short time, how is Zoom Phone doing in terms of global deployments and supporting customers with complex environments?
- What role do events play in the future of Zoom's portfolio?
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.
