Zoom Video Communications, a communications technology company headquartered in San Jose, Calif., provides video telephony and online chat services through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform. The company was founded in 2011 to offer teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations, but for many, it has become the preeminent means of staying in touch during the COVID-19 lockdowns, an unrivaled tool for business continuity.
“The COVID-19 crisis has driven higher demand for distributed, face-to-face interactions and collaboration using Zoom. Use cases have grown rapidly as people integrated Zoom into their work, learning, and personal lives,” said Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom.
Within just the first quarter of its current fiscal year, Zoom increased its customer count by 354 percent from the same quarter last year, boosting its user base to 265,400. And to show how much the company has grown in just the past few months, its total revenue for all of 2019 was $622 million. For the current fiscal year, first-quarter revenue was $382 million, up 169 percent year over year, and total revenue for the year is expected to approach $1.8 billion, due largely to the demand for remote work solutions for business.
CRM companies have taken notice of the company’s overnight success, and in 2020 alone, dozens of them, including SugarCRM, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Mediafly, Genesys, Five9, NICE InContact, Talkdesk, Aha!, Chorus.ai, and HubSpot, have integrated their technologies with Zoom.
“Sellers have always faced the challenge of presenting content that buyers find useful and engaging. These days, the challenge is even greater because the connection has to be made remotely,” said Jason Shah, chief technology officer at Mediafly, in a statement. “Many sellers that use Mediafly are already using Zoom. By partnering with Zoom, we enable them to simplify their workflow and deliver their engaging, effective, Mediafly-powered presentation experience in the same way they would have when face-to-face.”
But Zoom wasn’t relying on integrations alone to get its technology into the hands of more business users. In July Zoom introduced Zoom for Home to support remote work use cases. The solution includes cameras, microphones, and touchscreens for interactive screen sharing, whiteboarding, and annotating. The software allows users to start meetings, take and receive phone calls, and virtually collaborate with content sharing and annotation. It also syncs with users’ calendars, status, meeting settings, and phones.
“With employers and employees working through what the future of work will look like, it is important that people feel set up for success,” said Rich Costello, a senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement. “Three months ago, it was making sure employees had the right ergonomic setup. We’ve now moved to the phase of making sure employees have the right devices to enable productivity. The Zoom from Home category is a powerful way for the company to reach a work-from-home audience that craves tools to help with engagement, connection, and collaboration.”
Zoom also expanded its service availability in March, bringing its Zoom Phone cloud phone service to 11 additional countries; the total number of countries supported now stands at 17. It further expanded its Zoom Phone Beta Service to 24 countries. Zoom Phone launched in the United States and Canada in January 2019 and quickly expanded to Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and New Zealand.
“Our entire team found Zoom Phone easy to deploy and use,” said Jon Nicholls, global IT manager at Pearlfisher, a creative design and branding agency. “It offers voicemail, three-way calling, and all the other features we had with our legacy system, all with unmatched reliability. Our remote workers are especially pleased with the solution because it provides them with the features and functionality typical of an office, yet at home. Zoom Phone has been a win-win for our company.”
And it’s been a win-win for many others, too.