There has been much talk about Zoom Phone here, but I’m not sure I’ve seen any first-hand reports, so I will contribute this:
On Tuesday, my 2000-employee organization rolled out Zoom Phone to a select group of early testers, including me. Everyone will get it in March. As part of this, we have cancelled our phone service with Verizon (a 7-figure annual expense). We will pay much less to Zoom. We are also getting rid of our Cisco handsets; those who opt in will get handsets that are designed to work with Zoom Phone. (They are made by an Israeli company whose name I can’t recall.) We also are eliminating Cisco Jabber, which is our incumbent “soft phone” and messaging/chat client.
The “installation” of Zoom Phone was painless. On Tuesday morning, all of a sudden the Zoom iPhone app and the Zoom desktop application both had an extra tab at the top called “Phone.” I had to go to a webpage to integrate our Outlook contacts into Zoom. After that, Zoom Phone works intuitively – particularly for an iOS user. You place a call by typing in part of a name, or by using a phone-like key pad. That’s all there is to it. It is a pleasure to use, like the Zoom app generally.
I suspect many large enterprises are going to adopt Zoom Phone over the next several years, saving them money and making Zoom money. And if Zoom can crack the code of email and calendar, the Office franchise should watch out.
very useful anecdote to share. thanks for sharing.
this is what I would expect as well.
One clarification - the handset, while your company made it available, is not a necessity right? An employee can chose to just use app on the cell phone or computer and it just works?
How did it impact your bandwidth. We are looking at our VOIP phones and soft phones to replace with a more cost effective solution but one of the things we are working through is how the new device will impact network traffic requirements in the building. Did you have to improve your network or add additional bandwidth to be able to handle the load from zoom phone. If one uses their cell phone and app then would not expect it to add to the bandwidth requirements but how did it impact your network when used with the ZM devices
We added Zoom Phone to our medical practice. Setup was easy and customer service was good. Quality has been great. Cost is competitive. Before choosing Zoom Phone, we looked at RingCentral, Nextiva, 8X8, etc, none had the good customer service as Zoom Phone. I definitely see it taking market share from RingCentral.
It’s great to learn about the adoption of Zoom Phone and I appreciate the insights. However, I have greatly reduced my ZM position ( which is about 3.5% now) due to the following reasons.
#1. Here’s what I wrote sometime back…
"I joined a top Fortune 500 Company after a long career at MSFT. Neither does MSFT use ZM or my present company. AFAIK, GOOG also banned ZM and productivity has not been affected in any of these companies where the vast majority of employees are WFH. All these companies are doing very well and are being extremely productive through the pandemic.
Does that reflect something about the mission critical need for ZM in enterprises? Keeping in mind that ZM’s main target are enterprise customers. And I don’t see how they are going to monetize the free customer base that signed up during the pandemic."
If companies like MSFT, GOOG and many others managed without ZM during 2020; is it going to be indispensable for many others going forward ? I don’t think so.
#2. Zoom Phone: I don’t know much about this area and may be totally wrong on this but let me tell you something… In my 14 years at MSFT and the company I’m working at right now, I can hardly remember the times I really used my office phone. That piece of equipment just sat there while communications were moving to channels like Slack and Teams. And to talk to anyone else, I use my cell phone. To be a little rude and honest, occasionally I used to clean the dust off it! I do understand that many business still need and rely on the phone BUT my observation and understanding of the technology around us tells me that the days of those phones are numbered (like the typewriter). So, where’s the growth? Does someone have a growth chart for phones in the next 5 years just like we have for Cloud Computing?
Regarding #1 ‘neither MSFT or GOOG use ZM for videoconferencing’ (paraphrased)
Err, what would you think their developers or shareholders would do if MSFT or GOOG indeed used a competitor’s product instead of their own? MSFT has had multiple homegrown options to rely on and while I believe that GOOG needed some time to get its Meet service going, it’s not that they did not have videoconferencing options available to them either in spring last year (Hangouts, Duo).
Indeed, I would go further and remind you/us that ZM endured and grew at unbelievable rates last year despite of major security and privacy concerns (which was the reason why GOOG and many other companies and governments had officially banned ZM’s videoconferencing solution in the first place). I understand that there are still security concerns involved with using ZM but at least they have started offering an opt-in end-to-end encryption solution back in Oct/Nov (https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-enable-zoom-encryption/).
Using MSFT and GOOG as case studies here does not make a whole lot of sense to me. Other concerns, especially regarding privacy and security, are of much higher relevance. However, despite of the negative press and worries Zoom prevailed (so far). Sure, Teams is popular and its videoconferencing experience is slowly improving (I pretty much hate the whole platform but have to use it for work); GSuite/Workspace (which I use for my personal projects) has had certain success in the corporate environment and Meet is improving quickly. Yet, ZM has provided the superior experience and product according to pretty much any person I have ever talked to about their videoconferencing experiences.
RM
LONG ZM (6%); LONG MSFT (3%; because of Azure); no GOOG
RM, Your points are good but think in terms of the facts…
You wrote… “Using MSFT and GOOG as case studies here does not make a whole lot of sense to me. Other concerns, especially regarding privacy and security, are of much higher relevance.”
The reason I brought up MSFT and GOOG is because those two companies combined have a market cap of about $ 3 Trillion today! That $3 Trillion makes a lot of sense to me atleast!..and I’m pretty sure that many of us here use some service from these companies and are comfortable with the way they are handling our security.
***During the recent SolarWinds hack, MSFT had to rely a great degree on CRWD. That’s why CRWD is my #1 position.. Here’s a link to a post about CRWD’s advantage over MSFT I had written quite sometime back (when perhaps many on this board didn’t own CRWD): https://discussion.fool.com/this-is-a-great-point-and-thanks-for…
I don’t think MSFT needs to depend on ZM in a similar way that they are relying on CRWD today! That’s what some call a MOAT ( which I prefer to call as technical advantage).
And…Thinking about how Zoom would displace MSFT Teams or GOOG; I’ve no answers; perhaps never will… I just think that any business that has an Office 365 subscription, or Azure may want to use the free version of Teams which works pretty well when needed
Do take a step back and think why your company is using Teams and not ZM?
I think you’ve already answered the questions with your comment…
… here’s what you wrote…“Sure, Teams is popular and its videoconferencing experience is slowly improving (I pretty much hate the whole platform but have to use it for work); GSuite/Workspace (which I use for my personal projects) has had certain success in the corporate environment and Meet is improving quickly.”
If companies like MSFT, GOOG and many others managed without ZM during 2020; is it going to be indispensable for many others going forward ? I don’t think so.
That people can live without Zoom is a really silly statement. You can pick any company in the world and say the same thing about it.
It’s like people who could live without Amazon because there’s Walmart, or Apple because there’s Samsung, or Honda because there’s Toyota, or Starbucks because there’s Dunkin’, or Crowdstrike because there’s Kaspersky, or Datadog because there’s ELK.
The point is, there’s not a company on the planet without competition. Someone who has 100% market share. Yeah, Zoom will never have 100% market share. But neither will Skype, Teams, Webex, etc., etc.
But a company standardizing on Zoom won’t likely switch away. It’s too much of a hassle. And that makes Zoom indispensable for that company.
“Thinking about how Zoom would displace MSFT Teams or GOOG; I’ve no answers; perhaps never will…”
Well, I dont know if you watch the NFL but one example is that MSFT Teams is a sponsor of the NFL and have their commercials during the games, but if you listen to the team players and commentary they are all using ZOOM.
All the NFL teams and commentators have never mentioned actually using MSFT teams that funny. The Ravens even said how they players were becoming Zoomfessionals conducting practice remotely using Zoom not Teams when the practice facility was closed down.
I always wonder when I hear them mention ZOOM and comment to my wife of friends how come MSFT not insist the teams use Teams Im sure its freee, or at least ask them not to mention using ZOOM when they are paying big money to sponsor the league.
One clarification - the handset, while your company made it available, is not a necessity right? An employee can chose to just use app on the cell phone or computer and it just works?
That’s right. In fact, while this is in flux, most likely employees will have to opt in to get the handset. Otherwise, employees will just use our computers when we return to the office – whenever that may be – which, by then, will be what we’ve been doing for a long time.
We have a culture of using a speakerphone, where several employees will sit around a speakerphone away from where a computer would normally be. So how to deal with that? There is a “puck”-like product that acts as a speaker-phone. It connects to the computer by bluetooth. People will be able to get that too.
How did it impact your bandwidth. We are looking at our VOIP phones and soft phones to replace with a more cost effective solution but one of the things we are working through is how the new device will impact network traffic requirements in the building. Did you have to improve your network or add additional bandwidth to be able to handle the load from zoom phone. If one uses their cell phone and app then would not expect it to add to the bandwidth requirements but how did it impact your network when used with the ZM devices.
We will have to see, because we are doing this conversion at a time when no one is working in the building. In March 2020, we left behind offices with physical phones. When we return, the physical phones will be gone.
That said, because we were using VOIP before, the expectation is that this will not require any greater bandwidth. We shall see, however. I expect that even after things go back to “normal,” video calls will displace the majority of what were audio calls.
Thank you mnadel. I can see many companies get rid of their desk phones for office based employees, we are moving in that direction. However many places like plants/warehouses etc will still need phones due to fire regulations/security regulations etc. Will it be anywhere close to the number now, I do not believe so which is why when folks are claiming Zoom phone to be the next growth driver I do not agree as that space to me is diminishing. When we do out conference calls we have our laptops and one laptop gets connected to a Jabra or similar speaker phone that is then used by the full room while the phone sits unused
I was more optimistic about onzoom as a growth driver especially if ZM decides to slowly take on Youtube and allow onzoom to be a Youtube competitor but for now feel there are other opportunities that will better reward capital growth than ZM with its 100B market cap.
I am not sure if Zoom Phone can be a major growth driver. I think it can give VOIP vendors good competition. It could be more useful for the following–
-International call centers (I expect more companies to shift more call center operations abroad).
-Remote workers (including international) gig economy.
-International businesses. Eg, Google Meet isn’t really available in China (unless using VPN) and not sure what % of international businesses have MSFT Suite.
-Healthcare telemedicine with patients. Patients use more Zoom than MSFT Team and Google Meet.
