Zoom: What’s Next

Zoom was built from the ground up for our customers. At the time of our founding in 2011, we looked at what businesses need, their use cases, and the ways they work, and we custom-built a communications platform for their current and future needs. This is the foundation upon which we continue to enhance our platform: we listen to our customers and bring them happiness by delivering on their needs with frictionless solutions. 

We do so by applying our laser focus on innovation to build our offering at speed and scale – our ability to do so can be seen in the success of Zoom Phone, which has expanded to over 40 countries, sold over 2 million seats, and become a leader in the Gartner UCaaS Magic Quadrant, all less than 3 years from launch. 

We have also looked to acquire capabilities through M&A. Five9 was one such opportunity, as it presented an attractive means to bring to our customers an integrated contact center offering. That said, it was in no way foundational to the success of our platform nor was it the only way for us to offer our customers a compelling contact center solution.

If one thing is certain here at Zoom, it is that we never rest on our laurels – we have the long-term vision, strategy, and team to continue delivering happiness and drive sustainable growth. We shared much of that vision at Zoomtopia, and I am excited to highlight here our next areas of growth and innovation, all of which align directly to what our customers have told us they need to grow their businesses.

Video Engagement Center for the Contact Center Market

There is a clear need to bring video communications and customer engagement together in a meaningful way, and no one is better suited to do it than Zoom. We are very excited about our Video Engagement Center (VEC), our cloud-based contact center solution, which we announced at Zoomtopia 2021. VEC is Zoom’s answer to our customers’ requests for us to enter the contact center market and develop a solution to connect businesses with their customers by creating engaging experiences that build rapport, trust, and the sharing of expertise in a structured and immersive virtual environment. Launching in early 2022, our Video Engagement Center will be a flexible, easy-to-use solution. We are building this new solution with the same scalability and trusted architecture that has made Zoom the platform of choice for businesses around the world. 

This will be just one way in which we help enterprises engage with their customers in the contact center arena. We recognize that an open partner ecosystem is a key benefit of Zoom -- it drives innovation and ensures customers have the choice and flexibility to meet their unique needs. We also plan to maintain our long-standing partnerships with our valued contact center partners like Five9, Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, and Twilio to continue supporting our customers’ contact center of choice.

Events

Zoom Events is our answer to customers’ need to create successful virtual and hybrid events. Zoom Events Conference is a new event type that Zoom plans to make available this fall on Zoom Events. It will empower hosts to organize multi-track and multi-day events in a sophisticated format, with rich functionality, including event lobby, chat, networking, sponsors, surveys, recordings, analytics, and more. Zoom Events Conference will offer hosts and attendees a customizable experience with the ability to provide an engaging and connected virtual event experience. 

Developer Platform

A number of enhanced developer solutions and tools are in the works. Major recent announcements include Jumpstart, a new app builder tool, which aims to accelerate the creation of apps that leverage Zoom Video SDK capabilities. Also announced was the development of a CLI (command line interface) to help developers prototype and stand up a proof of concept, and the much-requested and highly anticipated addition of React Native to the Zoom Video SDK. We’re also introducing the ability to soon be able to list apps that leverage the Zoom Meeting SDK on the App Marketplace, further enabling distribution and discovery of innovations built using core Zoom functionality. By the end of the year, Zoom will also be releasing a new video API, Granular Scopes for APIs, an enhanced Meeting SDK for Web, new app developer roles on the App Marketplace, and QSS (quality of service subscription).

Zoom Apps

Zoom Apps are built to optimize meeting workflows. Later this year, we plan to make integration of Zoom Apps available throughout the platform, including Zoom Apps for Webinars and Zoom Apps for Mobile, as well as immersive apps, which will enable even more productive and collaborative app experiences.

Unified Communications

We’ve been busy developing innovations for our core unified communications solution to provide customers with everything they need to support digital and hybrid work environments. With this in mind, we’re looking forward to offering exciting new features including:

• Zoom Phone end-to-end encryption and video voicemail
• Enhanced whiteboard, an interactive collaboration feature, now with VR functionality through Oculus, to allow teams to collaborate as if they were in person
• Live translation and transcription to allow seamless collaboration for all
• Zoom Rooms smart gallery, a virtual meeting experience tailored to resemble an in-person experience through multiple video feeds from a single conference room to display people more clearly to remote attendees
• Interactive maps and authentication for hot desking, a bridge between virtual and in-person work to enable the hybrid future
• Zoom Team Chat features like huddle room and widgets to enable workplace community from anywhere
• And much, much more 

The world is entering a new era for communications and collaboration. The Zoom platform is continuing to transform the trajectory of communications by advancing the way we connect, share ideas, and get more done together -- regardless of location. Through our disciplined approach, focus on long-term sustainable growth, and proven track record of innovation, we will continue to deliver happiness to our customers, employees, and communities. I am so excited for what the future holds.

Editor's note 9/30/21: This blog post was updated to add Zoom Developer Platform enhancements.

Forward-Looking Statements

This communication contains express and implied “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding Zoom’s strategic priorities, market opportunity, product launches, the expected benefits of new products, growth strategy, partnerships and expected benefits from the same, and business aspirations to support organizations and people on multiple fronts as they look to reimagine work, communications and collaboration. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “project,” “will,” “would,” “should,” “could,” “can,” “predict,” “potential,” “target,” “explore,” “continue,” or the negative of these terms, and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. By their nature, these statements are subject to numerous uncertainties and risks, including factors beyond our control, that could cause actual results, performance or achievement to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the statements, including: declines in new customers and hosts, renewals or upgrades, difficulties in evaluating our prospects and future results of operations given our limited operating history, competition from other providers of communications platforms, continued uncertainty regarding the extent and duration of the impact of COVID-19 and the responses of government and private industry thereto, including the potential effect on our user growth rate once the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic tapers, particularly as a vaccine becomes widely available, and users return to work or school or are otherwise no longer subject to shelter-in-place mandates, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the overall economic environment, any or all of which will have an impact on demand for remote work solutions for businesses as well as overall distributed, face-to-face interactions and collaboration using Zoom, delays or outages in services from our co-located data centers, and failures in internet infrastructure or interference with broadband access which could cause current or potential users to believe that our systems are unreliable. Additional risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements are included under the caption “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2021. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements are made and are based on information available to Zoom at the time those statements are made and/or management's good faith belief as of that time with respect to future events. Zoom assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, except as required by law.