Zoom plans AWS Marketplace launch, MSP focus for Aus

Zoom is planning to make its products available on the AWS Marketplace in Australia and is looking to work with more managed services providers.

The communications software company’s head of global channels, Nick Tidd, told techpartner.news that these are the next steps for the company following the recent overhaul of its partner programme.

He added that the goal was not for end users to be able to procure the software themselves, but to expand the ways that partners could access Zoom’s products for customers.

“To us, AWS Marketplace, as an aggregator hyperscaler, works in conjunction with our resell and agency businesses," he said.

"It's not a yes or no, it is: ‘I am a resale partner of Zoom’s, I have a customer that has a commit spend with AWS, and I want to retire my commit spend’ - we will give our partners the ability to retire that spend."

The program would be balanced to suit the size of the market as, Tidd said, it’s important to measure partner success based on any geography’s unique size and scale.

Tidd also outlined how they plan to appeal to managed services providers (MSPs) with the company’s broad range of products, which now includes contact centre as a service (CCaaS).

“MSPs selling to small and medium enterprises needed delegated admin access and other features from us, so that market will open up,” he said.

Zoom’s Australia and New Zealand head of channels, Mike Johnson, said that the company’s success with its contact centre and unified communications products was drawing in customers across the region.

Tidd explained that the company had been focused on the channel as it had rapidly expanded its offerings, saying more than 80% of the company’s new business was now coming through the channel globally and that number is “even higher” for contact centre deals.

The channel execs conceded that the rate of change could be challenging for partners looking to come on board, or just keep apace - however, they noted that there were strategies in place to help support them.

“The one thing you can do in the partner community that is frowned upon is rapid change, and so we're implementing a 12 month cycle where we will not do any levelling,” Tidd explained.

“If a partner moves up during the programme, that's fine, but we're not going to do any levelling until October of 2026. That gives the partner community the ability to be recognised for the investments they're making and they continue to make.”

Over the course of the next 12 months, Tidd said that partners can expect a "much more robust" partner portal that is focused on the delivery and enablement of training and marketing.

“I have never seen in my entire career this many partners lined up asking to take training and asking for information; it’s usually the other way around," he said.

"When I talk to our technical community of our partners, they say the number one way I find about things is your product release notes, so over the next 12 months, we'll be focused on partner enablement, partner messaging, partner to- and through-marketing to enable us to work effectively together with a partner.”

Johnson added that the company was also planning to improve the communication to its partners based on insights from analytics.

“There's two things in a SaaS world you pay very close attention to: maintaining that customer and having a low degree of churn, and the adoption of new customers," he said,

"We've been pushing out analytics so that when it comes time for renewal, we’re informing the partner some 90 to 120 days ahead of time if they have a risk for churn based on utilisation of licence.”

He added that the company would be focusing on a co-sell approach in the ANZ market as it continued to onboard new partners.

“We've got our five-plus partners in ANZ who are accredited to be able to go and implement both Zoom phone and contact centre, and a lot more that are in training,” he said.

“We lead with the implementation services and the wraparound services from the partners,  so those customer wins have always got a partner involved, and then the partner is implementing and deploying and ultimately making those customers successful in the market.”