UC Advanced Issue # 1

INTERVIEW: ZOOM

Pivoting to Success It’s not often a brand becomes synonymous with a technology type. Yet, Zoom has experienced the highs and the lows of such an accolade. Speaking to Elliot Mulley-Goodbarne, Head of Channel for EMEA Dion Smith set out Zoom’s plan for the next three years.

When I first came into journalism, the deskphone was the best tool I could use to generate stories, strike up relationships and, on occasion, avoid a scolding from the editor! It was also the main way I would conduct interviews, hooking up a dictaphone to the phone line and discussing the impacts of the iPhone on the mobile industry, how 5G could revolutionise connectivity, and why everyone is moving into a service-led business model. Those mysteries have long been solved, but in the intervening time the deskphone, a once staple of the office, seems to be on the way out, especially when ‘setting up a call’ often means staring into a screen rather than picking up the phone. One of the brands responsible for the shift is Zoom, the video conferencing solution barely a decade old and dominating the B2B communications space, catering for 350 meeting participants a day at the last count in 2020. As we all know, after experiencing steady growth up to Q4 2019, Zoom quarterly revenues burst through the $200m and $300m marks in the first quarter of 2020 as video collaborations became more important. Since then, Zoom Video Communications annual revenue has grown to $4.393B in 2023, a 7.15% increase from 2022 and a 13x increase compared to five years ago. Growing up fast It’s not just the revenue that has grown either. When Zoom was first presented to the market, it was, at its core, a video chat solution. Now that video chat platform has grown into a fully functional video conferencing solution, catering to 1-on-1 meetings, to thousand-member all hands for the biggest conglomerates. That growth has also been seen in the new technologies Zoom has embraced, and as

such, what started as a video chat programme has evolved into a platform that transcends business communications. “If you go through the journey of Zoom, we only really had one product for the first several years of the company,” said Dion Smith, Head of EMEA Channels at Zoom. “So the depth of enablement that’s required around that particular item wasn’t necessarily there. “As we reflect all of the different products that make up our platform, from phone to contact centre, events to meetings, chat to Zoom IQ, that requires a heightened level of skill sets and insights to be able to position and sell now, and part of that is utilising the channel. “There are partners that are specialists in a particular area and we cater to lots of different needs. From our perspective, we’ve gone on a journey of maturing our ecosystem and understanding different types of enablement that accompany different partner types. We’ve seen that be hugely effective based on the level of engagement that we’ve been gaining with the partners.” Reselling the Wheel As the Zoom portfolio has expanded from a video conferencing solution to a wheel of

Dion Smith Head of EMEA Channels