The Unexpected Success of Zoom
Nine years ago, disgruntled Cisco Webex engineer Eric Yuan founded Zoom as a videoconferencing solution. Since then, its popularity has only grown. The unexpected success of Zoom was simply incredible.
Zoom’s success has been propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused offices to close and created a surge in remote work demand. Zoom has also managed to use its technology for other reasons besides simply closing offices during its outbreak.
The Pandemic
Zoom began booming around the world as lockdowns forced people to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, providing millions of people with a reliable way to connect. Zoom became essential for business meetings, baby showers, weddings, birthday celebrations, and other social gatherings around the globe.
Zoom’s initial public offering (IPO) in April 2019 was one of the highest-valued tech floats ever, and many predicted its unstoppable rise. Yet Zoom hasn’t enjoyed such smooth sailing since.
Zoom hit an unexpected wall after an explosive initial public offering (IPO), rocket-ship growth, and subsequent revenue and profit increases that were far beyond investors’ expectations in 2021. While still enjoying strong revenues and profits, their stock price has experienced significant decreases with investors now having lower expectations of them as investors have altered their expectations accordingly.
Zoom was designed as an accessible alternative to legacy videoconferencing companies like WebEx and Cisco, with an easy and intuitive user experience that enabled polls, raising hands, using digital whiteboarding tools, or reacting via emojis during meetings. Customers seem very pleased with Zoom; many find its product easy to use; unlike competitors Google and Microsoft who offer an array of collaboration products, Zoom’s core strength lies solely within videoconferencing – meaning better security and stability for its users.
Scalability
Zoom is a video conferencing tool you can use for team meetings, one-to-ones, and more. Since its advent during the pandemic, Zoom has proven invaluable as an easy and accessible means of staying in contact across distances and the success of Zoom became huge. In addition, the service also records your sessions so you can watch back later if desired.
However, you should be wary of certain issues regarding Zoom when looking at the success of Zoom. For instance, not using the latest version can prevent you from taking advantage of key security features – for instance, end-to-end encryption isn’t common among video conferencing tools and could potentially be missed out upon.
Concerns have been expressed that Zoom may collect personal information during meetings. This data could then be sold or used for facial recognition systems; Zoom has responded by offering privacy controls and explaining its usage of your information.
Zoom has strengthened its infrastructure to meet the increased demand for online communication during a pandemic, including 17 data centers that can quickly deploy additional servers if required. Furthermore, Zoom introduced new features to make it easier for meeting hosts to suspend or kick out disruptive participants quickly and report disruptive behavior – an advancement over its previous only ability for meeting hosts to do this.
User Experience
Zoom is a prime example of what happens when a company finds an important need and fulfills it without regard for anything else. Within eight years, Zoom had accomplished in just one area what many rival companies took twice that long to do in two.
Zoom’s product is also user-friendly; the interface offers a familiar look from other software on computers and phones and features such as raising hands, writing on whiteboards, and reacting with emojis help bring people back into a conference or classroom setting.
The free version of Zoom is a reason for the success of Zoom since it gives users an opportunity to try it for themselves before deciding to invest. With 45-minute meeting limits and limited participants, this free version serves as an effective way of engaging potential new customers while building loyalty toward our platform.
The team has also taken proactive measures to keep their technology updated and functioning effectively during the pandemic, with data centers located in 17 locations worldwide able to keep pace with rising demands for online communication tools that have put a strain on more popular social media platforms such as Facebook.
Security
After Zoom’s rapid growth, security concerns have surfaced. To address them and reassure users, the company has prioritized responding to them and providing assurances – for instance by mandating password-protected meetings by default and using virtual waiting rooms to ensure only those invited join calls.
Encrypting video and audio, restricting meeting transcript access only to authorized users, and setting forth privacy policies governing the collection of personal information such as IP addresses, operating systems, and device details are among its other security measures. Furthermore, they say they never sell or otherwise share this data – instead using it only for troubleshooting, analytics, and reporting purposes.
Zoom’s security measures have proven successful, yet they continue to face other challenges. Zoom must keep its services operational amid surging demand for online communication tools and social networks that have overwhelmed far larger platforms like Facebook (FB). Zoom manages this challenge effectively using its 17 global data centers which route audio and video traffic directly to users near where they reside.
Security concerns affecting Zoom have included “Zoom-bombing,” where uninvited participants could gain entry to meetings by knowing the meeting number; and an uninstall bug that left behind a localhost web server after uninstalling an application; in addition to two zero-day exploits that allowed hackers to gain control of both PCs and Macs.
