Zoom becoming world’s leading business communications tool

Zoom takes big steps to grow

One of the world’s first M1-compatible apps, Zoom is taking great leaps forward as it seeks to enhance its brand from being the world’s leading video collaboration service to become the world’s leading business communications tool. It has utterly eclipsed FaceTime and now it seems the likes of Team and WebEx are in the crosshairs.

Acquisitions, apps and events

That the company seeks to reposition itself as a go-to enterprise tool is clear, as is the breadth of its vision for the space.

In July, the company announced plans to acquire Five9. The idea being to combine the latter company’s Contact Center as a Service solution within Zoom’s broader communications platform. The move propels Zoom into the lucrative contact center market and gives it a deep push into enterprise IT,

“Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact center, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers,” said Eric S. Yuan, Zoom CEO and Founder.

Zoom acquired Kites in June, a startup developing machine translation solutions. As it rolls out products based on this it’s hard to not to imagine Zoom will eventually act as a translation and collaboration tool empowering international teams to work together remotely.

[Also read: 15 essential Zoom keyboard shortcuts for iPad and Mac]

That’s not the only big news from the company. It today announced the general availability of its latest innovations, Zoom Apps and Zoom Events.

What are Zoom Apps?

Zoom Apps seamlessly embeds third-party apps within the Zoom Meetings and desktop client experiences, enhancing collaboration, productivity, and entertainment. It extends the offerings of the Zoom App Marketplace, which already hosts over 1,500 third-party integrations.

There are over 50 Zoom Apps available now, including apps for whiteboarding, project management, note-taking, and video games, with more in development.

Here are some apps available now:

• Asana: Host purposeful meetings, create in-meeting action items, create, edit, and assign tasks, all without leaving your Zoom meeting.
• Dot Collector: The Dot Collector app allows everyone in a meeting to share their perspective through real-time feedback and polling.
• Dropbox Spaces: Keep everyone on the same page by collaborating in real time in a single shared workspace before, during, and after Zoom Meetings.
• SurveyMonkey Enterprise by Momentive: Drive more engaging and inclusive meetings with in-the-moment feedback from surveys and polls.
• Miro: Leading online whiteboard now available for collaboration in Zoom.

Introducing Zoom Events

Another all-new offering, Zoom Events lets you create engaging hybrid, virtual experiences, such as sales summits, customer events, trade shows, and internal events.

Zoom Events offers a bunch of handy features such as event hubs, dedicated corporate virtual event spaces, customizable registration, and networking through a chat-enabled virtual event lobby. You can also use this tool to host fee-based events, classes and more.

Zoom Events also allows event-specific reporting around registration, attendance, and ticket sales. There’s also the OnZoom feature, currently in beta, that offers similar features to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Eager to do as it says, Zoom says it will host its annual user conference, Zoomtopia, and Zoom Academy, on Zoom Events this year.

“Zoom Apps and Zoom Events are critical components in broadening Zoom’s offering and reach,” said Roopam Jain, Vice President, Information and Communications Technologies at Frost & Sullivan in a press release.

“These solutions empower users to accomplish more with video communications and are a testament to Zoom’s focus of enabling customers to create and grow businesses entirely on its platform—whether through applications, integrations, events, or other services.”

“Virtual events are a natural adjacency for Zoom,” said Dave Michels, Principal Analyst and Founder of TalkingPointz. “Zoom Events consolidates ticketing, managing, and hosting into a single, virtual event solution. Zoom put all of the virtual event tools and technology into a single solution that is intuitive and easy to use.”

The bottom line?  Zoom is not sitting on its laurels and is investing deeply and wisely into new products and services with a laser focus on collaboration and the needs of the remote enterprise. In doing so it is making what seems to be a successful transition to become a peer play with any other collaboration enterprise firm. But with the advantage that most of the planet now already calls such meetings a ‘zoom’.

That synchronicity between Zoom and its function speaks volumes. I think the company may have a chance to build an empire here.

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