Zoom is distancing itself from entrenched rivals with a raft of new products and features announced at Zoomtopia 2020. From Zapps, the digital marketplace to OnZoom, online ticketed events platform, Zoom is strengthening its user base by going beyond the core video experience.
Zoom is playing an outsized role in helping us get through WFH. Now, the video conferencing major has also transcended from being simply a meeting app to an everything company. The San Jose-headquartered tech giant distanced itself from entrenched rivals Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex with a raft of new platforms, features at the recently concluded annual event — Zoomtopia 2020Opens a new window was held last week.
Let us have a look at them and how they can improve Zoom utility:
1. OnZoom
Virtual events are a thing now. While it’s true that virtual events tend to limit in-person interactions, they still are a great way for a company to communicate its market presence, build brand awareness, generate leads, educate leads and prospective customers, etc. Zoom is capitalizing on this trend with OnZoom, an online ticketed events platform wherein users can create and host free, paid, and fundraising events. The platform enables event discovery, monetization through ticket sales. Depending upon the user license, hosts can create events up to 1000 attendees.
See Also: 6 Ways to Get Virtual Events Right (Remotely)
2. End to End Encryption (E2EE)
Zoom drove much of the video business since the start of 2020. It also was subject to global scrutiny regarding the security of its platform. To counter growing security risks, Zoom introduced end-to-end encryption (E2EE) that is now ready to be deployed.
Starting this week, Zoom will rollout E2EE as a technical preview. The company said, “This optional feature will be generally available in technical preview to free and paid Zoom users next week. It can be enabled at the account, group, and user level, and, depending on how the account admin sets up the feature, can be toggled on and off by the host on a by-meeting basis.†One thing that’s important to note here is that users will be able to leverage encryption keys that use publicly available cryptography to secure meetings.
To implement E2EE for video meetings, all users in the meeting need to have E2EE enabled. It is also available for free users.
Honestly surprised I don’t hear more chatter on Zoomtopia. Super impressive updates on TAM runway and product:
1) 300M users from 10M pre-covid
2) Global 2K penetration ($100K+ ARR) is 12%
3) 22% of ZM Phone customers are new and don’t use video
4) OnZoom looks 🔥 (see below) pic.twitter.com/m9vAHVyRF2Opens a new window— Shiv Sharma (@shivsharma_5) October 15, 2020Opens a new window
3. SDK (Software Development Kit) Updates
By the end of October, developers will be able to build better Zoom experiences into their respective applications. Zoom introduced the Customizable SDK, which allows developers to create tailor-made experiences atop the Zoom platform. It can be used to deliver Zoom’s video functionality into custom applications, complete with the option to customize UI and session control as well.
Meetings UI, on the other hand, enables developers to integrate Zoom Meetings into their pre-existing application workflows with the default Zoom Meetings UI.
Developers can sign up hereOpens a new window . Customizable SDKs will be available by the end of October.
See Also:Â What’s New in Microsoft Teams: 6 Highlights From Ignite 2020
4. Zapps
Zapps is in more ways than one Zoom’s digital storefront that gives users access to applications designed to streamline the video meet workflows. Zoom’s newly minted digital marketplace enables easy and quick access to applications right where users would need to boost productivity.
So far, 25 companies have signed up with Zoom as Zapps launch partners. They are currently building Zapps such as:
- Atlassian, Asana, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and Wrike for collaboration;Â
- Coursera, Kahoot!, and Kaltura for Education
- Slido, Cameo etc., for in-meeting experience development Â
- Woven, Pitch, Superhuman etc., for productivity enhancement
- HubSpot, Gong, etc., for sales & marketing activities Â
- Lucidspark, Miro, etc., for whiteboardingÂ
- ServiceNow, PagerDuty for support & incident response
Chorus.ai CEO Jim Benton told VentureBeatOpens a new window , “[Apple] opened up their API so that others could build apps. We went a year and a half with iPhones that just had the baseline apps that Apple had — you know, calculator, messaging, music, photos. And it was remarkable. We were blown away by what we could do. And then they opened it up, and we saw companies like Box reinvent themselves. We saw companies like Pandora suddenly thrive, where they had a beautiful player. And we saw companies like Sonos no longer have to build the hardware they had. I think that this is a very powerful moment.â€
Paid and free users will have access to Zapps, slated to be available before the end of 2020.
5. Platform Updates
Besides new products, Zoom announced the following feature updates for its UCaaS platform:
Immersive scenes: Users can select and set a custom background for meetings to create more inclusivity (at least visual) in video meetings — for example, a classroom or a conference hall.
Contactless collaboration: Improved voice command for greater control of meeting experiences and for contactless workflows on Zoom Rooms.
Zoom Rooms smart gallery: Generates a gallery view of all meeting remote participants through AI.
Zoom Phone features: Zoom has provisioned E911 for emergency situations to alert team members and 911 dispatch simultaneously. So, if a user calls 911, not only the operators on 911 will be connected, the organization’s internal safety teams will also be notified. It integrates with Zoom Digital Signage and Zoom Chat.
Webinar features: Users will be able to share reactions in real-time. Breakout rooms enable a smaller group within a conference to create smaller groups for an interactive continuation of the larger webinar. It also includes a clear delineation of who the speaker is with on-screen graphics.
Video Waiting Rooms: Gives greater control to hosts regarding who joins the meeting. Hosts can now choose to allow or disallow a guest/meeting participant from a waiting room.
High Fidelity Audio: This is an ambient noise cancellation mechanism based on AI.
See Also: Wire Takes On Video Conferencing Rivals With a Next-Gen Meeting Solution
Takeaway
Zoom is tightening its grip on its ever-expanding user base with a slew of groundbreaking features from online ticketed events to the digital marketplace with the best-of-breed apps. While Microsoft turned around Teams with a stellar line-up of AI-based features, as evident from Ignite 2020, Zoom reinforces its dominance by broadening its video communications strategy and going beyond meetings.
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