At a time of unprecedented digital transformation, few industries evolved more rapidly than Unified Communications (UC) and leading the line was Zoom Video Communications, Inc. The company that captured the public’s imagination in the early-locked-down COVID world, is now a very different solution. What started out as an application, is now a multi-faceted UCaaS platform, that fully supports UC requirements across all segments and verticals. It recently launched a new UC-centric bundle, Zoom One, and revamped its partner program – Zoom Up. With that, the Australian channel needs to pay heed.
Where is UC at right now?
Zoom’s new focus is in line with the leading UC industry narrative: that we’ve moved beyond the initial, frantic, deploy-anything-that-works-at-any-cost, early-COVID phase to a more considered approach that prioritises best practices for worker communications and collaboration. This includes meeting equity, which is the requirement for all participants of a web conference to have a consistent, equal experience, whether they’re working remotely or at the edge of a screen, at the back of a boardroom.
Zoom Phone, Zoom One and Zoom Up: What you need to know
Zoom Phone is a modern cloud phone system that includes traditional PBX features and seamlessly integrates with the Zoom platform. It is designed to offer an extremely simple user experience whereby a user can view the presence status of other users and initiate a chat or a call. The voice call can then be seamlessly escalated to a video meeting on a user’s mobile device, computer or handed over to a Zoom Room. Throughout this process, it’s simple for all participants (remote and local) to collaboratively utilise tools like Zoom Whiteboard (which is a persistent visual collaboration product that can be used before, during, and after any meeting, or without any meeting at all). It also means that workers can easily collaborate regardless of where they are in the world. Zoom IQ for Sales is also integrated into the collaboration experience – Zoom IQ for Sales delivers customer insights from sales conversations that help share best practices across all sales teams and automatically provides sales insights to marketing and enablement, so they can iterate on messaging and training faster.
As of August 2022, Zoom Phone sold nearly four million seats worldwide. Ashley Allen, ANZ Channel Sales Lead, says of Zoom’s offering, “To accommodate the ever-changing requirements of modern workers, our focus has been to enable simplicity of use and management, with a seamless, consistent, and intuitive experience, for all of Zoom’s features. This means that now Zoom is a platform of choice not just an application of choice.”
The resulting solution is called Zoom One, which launched in June. It’s an all-in-one bundle that brings together chat, phone, whiteboard, meetings and more into a single solution. It's designed to eliminate the complicated, piecemeal approach to UC that users, IT admins and financial controllers traditionally struggle with. Allen says that Zoom One was created, “After recognising that organisations were looking to consolidate their applications, consolidate their spend and really embrace the nature of what Zoom does, which is to ‘deliver happiness’ to the end customer.”
The applications and features within the Zoom One bundle, are catered for organisations that may have all of their workers working from home, are in a state of hybrid work or have fully transitioned back to the office.
Allen adds, “All the features and functions that users have come to expect from traditional PBXs are also built-in to Zoom Phone. But there’s also the added recording, reporting, video mail and call routing capabilities along with all the traditional UC features that small organisations can easily leverage. We also include PSTN calling, locally and globally, as well as license options that support BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier).”
Allen concludes, “For a very long time, UCaaS became entwined around IP telephony with service providers adding in different modes of communication. But now, any mode of communication, whether it’s chat, voice, video, audio conferencing or contact centre functionality falls under the umbrella of UC and this is what Zoom One is able to deliver: a single, scalable customer license that can operate as a single, do-everything platform.”
Why MSPs need to join the Zoom Up Partner Program
The Zoom Up Partner Program is designed to engage and reward qualified value-added Zoom Reseller Partners and simplify the sales cycle based on their business models and how they engage with customers to deliver Zoom’s video-first unified communications as a service to customers. To recognise and reward Authorized Partners for the level of investment they have made in their Zoom practice, the Program is organized into 3 levels - Enrolled, Sales, and Performance. Each level within the Program has specific requirements and benefits. Authorized Reseller Partners enter the program at the Enrolled level, and then may move to the Sales or Performance level as they achieve requirements.
In addition to a revamped Partner Program, Zoom continuously innovates to offer the most relevant solutions to the UC market. The Zoom One bundle will be a great addition to the lineup of Zoom solutions that partners can bring to customers via their partnership with Zoom. She says, “Whether they’re an AV integrator that’s working on hybrid working (or room design), whether they’re a traditional IP telephony carrier partner or voice expert, or whether they’re a broad UCaaS provider, elements of our Zoom Up program provide opportunities to our partners to create value around Zoom and add more value to their end customers.”
Another benefit for Zoom partners is the accreditation and competency elements that enable partners to distinguish their Zoom capabilities and skills. Plus, it helps partners explain the benefits of any Zoom solutions and applications for customers to use the Zoom platform to its fullest extent.
Finally, partners can utilise the Zoom Partner Demand Centre, which is a great resource that helps partners kickstart and automate their demand generation initiatives with Zoom Allen concludes, “The Zoom Up Partner Program provides a clear framework for existing and potential new partners to accelerate their growth by offering Zoom's full platform to their customers.”
