Forbes Article on Zoom

The previous post linked to an article about free Zoom for K-12 schools, but in actuality it is an entire Forbes “Cover Article” about Zoom and its CEO, and is very worth reading.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/03/13/zoom-vide…

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I have been using Zoom for few years. I am also forced to use WebEx, Skype, Google Hangouts etc. Zoom is by far the best in getting first time users, it’s reliable, quality of audio, sharing screens etc is good. It’s also free up to certain minutes encouraging people to experience it globally including in areas where bandwidth is a problem. Large Companies use very expensive video infrastructure in their conference rooms. Most users invariably spend first 15 minutes of every call getting video conference to work. Zoom has a huge opportunity to replace all that.

Zoom could be for video conferencing similar to how Google ended up for searching.

Based on Forbes article, it’s good that Zoom is using own data centers to offer services. That means Zoom has control of it’s infrastructure costs as opposed to using public cloud providers like AWS. In situations like this with exponential usage, they would have ended up with huge cloud bill. On the other hand, they also need to invest in capacity for peak usage.

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“Zoom could be for video conferencing similar to how Google ended up for searching.”

I wonder if Twilio would be a good acquisition/merger candidate for Zoom. It would slow down growth rates but might accelerate the idea of becoming the google or AWS of communication.

Twilio has an 11.18B market cap on my quick google search, Zoom 29.7B. Maybe use that richly valued stock currency in an all stock acquisition.

I’m not technical enough to know how complementary the technologies are or if Zoom would be better off developing similar capabilities themselves but a thought.

Based on Forbes article, it’s good that Zoom is using own data centers to offer services. That means Zoom has control of it’s infrastructure costs as opposed to using public cloud providers like AWS. In situations like this with exponential usage, they would have ended up with huge cloud bill. On the other hand, they also need to invest in capacity for peak usage.

These Data Centers are becoming amazing. I was in a brand new Google data center yesterday. It sits on about 40 acres of land. The Data center itself is huge and is only for Google. They are building another one, on the same property, that they started in September and they think will be done in May. They plan on having 5 data centers,at least, on this property. All of this just for Google and it is not the only one. This is just one city.

Andy

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“One would be a tool, inspired in part by consumer apps like Instagram and Snapchat, that would provide a filter that frames a user’s face in better lighting, or with blemishes tuned out. “We want to have a touch up to your appearance”

Glamour Zoom?