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Indian Express
3 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
From AI agents to cloud telephony, Zoom executives discuss company's next act
Zoom wants to be much more than a video chat platform. It is taking on Google and Microsoft in enterprise software by shipping productivity tools such as Zoom Documents, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Whiteboard, etc. It has also rolled out Zoom AI Companion and is integrating AI into all levels of its product suite. Zoom is also looking to strengthen its foothold in India by expanding its cloud-based enterprise telephony service called Zoom Phone to four additional licenced service areas across the country. The company further launched Contact Center here that enables customers to reach out to Zoom's enterprise clients through a wide range of channels, including voice, video, virtual agents, social media, email, and messaging apps. Security is central to everything Zoom does, Steve Rafferty, head of APAC and EMEA at Zoom, told in an exclusive interaction in New Delhi last week. Echoing this, Sameer Raje, the general manager and head of India & SAARC region at Zoom, highlighted the company's federated approach to AI that empowers its customers with greater control, privacy, and choice. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview: Zoom became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, it has pivoted to becoming more than a video conferencing platform. How does Zoom Phone and launching Zoom Contact Center in India further that vision? Steve: If you think of Zoom as a business communications platform, then video and meetings was the first element of that. Lots of organisations enter from different pivots. So we were meetings first, and now we've got chat, Contact Center, Phone, Clips, Documents, and so much more. We're trying to give our customers and partners one place to meet effectively, whether that's message, video, or phone. Whether it's internal communication or messaging externally with customers or suppliers, Zoom will give you that unified platform experience. That was always the plan. We just started with meetings. You mentioned that getting Zoom Phone regulatory compliant in India was an elaborate process. What were some of the terms and conditions involved in the DoT authorisation? Also, what do you think needs to change in terms of the eligibility conditions for cloud-based telephony services? Sameer: Authorisation is basically the license. It's the UL access BMO license which we took in all the six telecom circles [Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi-NCR]. And each of the circles have their own requirements as well as technical call flow, approvals, so on and so forth. It's not as simple as building it once for one telecom circle and having it work everywhere. Logically, yes, the product might be the same but each circle requires its own set of regulatory approvals. When you have a global product, the DoT requirements are very stringent. For instance, all equipment must be certified by DoT. There are specific certification programmes and you cannot just use any hardware. From the hardware to the call flows, we had to change some of the elements of the product to make it compliant within the country. Hence, it was time consuming. Not only that, each telecom circle needs to be connected not only to the Zoom cloud but also to local telcos across the region and country. That includes setting up incoming and outgoing interconnections, which is a complex and time-consuming process. But that doesn't mean that you cannot use Zoom Phone anywhere outside these circles. Right now, these six circles are where you can procure the license from, but you can travel anywhere and accept calls and make calls to anywhere in the country. It's been more than a year since Zoom Workplace was introduced. How's the response been from enterprise clients compared to everyday users in terms of adoption and overall experience? How much of that has translated to sales? Steve: It's been very strong across all of our regions, especially internationally. What we're seeing now is different entry points for customers. Some customers may come in to start from a Contact Center journey because they've got a particular customer requirement, and we fix that. Then they'll adopt Zoom Phone or messaging. The workforce is changing at the moment. We're seeing a lot younger, more diverse workforce come in, and they've really taken to the Zoom platform because you can communicate by chat, you can pick up the phone, you can send a clip, you can join a work meeting, engage with customers, and so on. There's so many different angles to procure information. We've got control of so much data. A business can take that data and deliver better experiences to their customers. Have you noticed differences in how AI features are being adopted across specific use cases like customer support, live translation, meeting summaries, etc? Steve: There's two sides to that. There's the internal day-to-day job, and there's how you communicate with customers. We were with a customer last week at a sports shop. What they want is a specific chatbot for their clients, and they also want to be able to escalate that call really quickly to a human depending on the requirements. So if somebody wants to procure a tennis shoe, it is dead easy to handle. But if somebody wants bespoke running shoes, that's a specialist treatment. That's what we're seeing from a customer perspective. Zoom Workplace allows you to move those conversations around. Sameer: I'll add one critical point to that. We include Zoom Workplace in our license at no extra cost. Any other platform or AI engine may charge $20-$30 per user and the CEO or senior leadership may go for it thinking its the in thing. But are they really going to be that productive? Or does it make more sense to spend that $30 at the lower level so that the support agent can be more productive using AI on Zoom? They should be utilising AI where it makes better sense. It could be customer support or sales. Zoom Workplace can be rolled out across the organisation. One of the other areas that has been very positive to me is having all of that in one location. All the integrations on Zoom Workplace makes life so much easier and gives us hours back every week. While LLMs (large language models) can be quite convincing, trust is still a barrier to enterprise adoption. How do you solve for that? Steve: Security has to be at the heart of everything you do, whether it's AI or whether it's a basic implementation of any technology. We work with our customers, from CISO all the way down, to make sure that the data they're exposing is the correct data. We work with a security bank because you've seen from some of our competitors, how they've exposed people's salaries all the way through a business. We start with the security first? What's the outcome you're looking for, and how can we give you a secure outcome? And then the platform gets deployed based on that. What do you think about the role of AI agents on your platform, especially in automating enterprise workflows? Do you see them evolving into a meaningful revenue stream? Steve: It's about complementing the human workforce. It's not about replacing them. You've seen a lot of press with some organisations saying 'we're going to slim down our workforce. We're going to stick AI agents out there', and then it's difficult. What we do is, is, we speed up that journey for the customer. If you think about booking flights on air travel, for instance, we can pretty much run that whole system through a virtual agent. Sameer: If you look at our AI Companion, it's been embedded in a couple of products that we've introduced like Zoom Whiteboard where you can draw a circle and the AI will actually make it into a perfect circle. Zoom Workflows is also in beta right now. Beyond that, we also introduced Custom AI. Let's say you're in a pharmaceutical industry and you're using a particular terminology. You want the AI model to use that terminology, right? So it allows you to create your own language within that. What is Zoom's approach to AI development? Sameer: We have a federated model. This means we use our own LLMs as well as other industry-standard LLMs (OpenAI and Anthropic's models). That's how we shift between low-cost and high-cost GPUs. We also permit customers to bring their elements to a certain extent. That's a chargeable service. We are helping organisations break down their silos and improvise employee experience. We're quite happy for the customer to work where they want, and we support them with all of our tools and our AI and and our platform underneath. It's quite a different model to others. We've also made a commitment that we won't use customer data to train our models. But you're also in competition with these big tech companies, right? Most of their AI services seem to be bundled into their office suites. Steve: Yes but we don't walk into a Google or a Microsoft customer and say, 'What a terrible decision. You need to rip it all out. Stick Zoom in.' We go: 'Congratulations on your decision. Now, let's make sure you get the best value for money'. Not everything that's bundled works, and you're seeing how those bundles consistently change. What we allow you to do is to take the best video platform and plug it in, as well as the best phone platform if you want to use it. We've got Contact Center that you can plug in to make your Google or Microsoft Office environment sing much better.
Indian Express
11-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
Zoom expands cloud-based phone service in India, debuts AI-powered Contact Center
Video conferencing giant Zoom is expanding its cloud-based enterprise telephony service in India. The company announced on Wednesday, June 11, that Zoom Phone will now be available in four additional licenced service areas across the country, including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, and the Delhi-NCR region (Delhi, Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Noida, and Gurugram). Zoom Phone was already approved by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to operate in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. After Wednesday's announcement, the service is now available in a total of six telecom circles in India. It not only strengthens Zoom's foothold in India but also signals a broader shift in how enterprise communication is evolving towards cloud-based telephony solutions offered by a growing class of unified communications as a service (UCaaS) providers. Paid users of Zoom have access to Zoom Phone as an add-on. The company further said it has plans to bring Zoom Phone to additional areas in the future. It is offering clients Zoom Phone as a full-stack solution with an omnichannel contact center platform and Zoom AI Companion for post-call summaries, voicemail task extraction, and voicemail prioritisation. Customers located in regions where Zoom Phone is not yet available might still be able to access the service by visiting the company's self-service web portal and acquiring native phone numbers based on specific telecom circles, such as Karnataka, Delhi-NCR, and Mumbai, as per the company. In addition to expanding access to Zoom Phone, the company has introduced a new offering called Contact Center. It is a product that enables customers to reach out to Zoom's enterprise clients through a wide range of channels, including voice, video, virtual agents, social media, email, and messaging apps. 'Zoom Contact Center utilizes the Zoom data centers in India to handle its services, supporting customer expectations and compliance requirements, particularly in sectors such as government, healthcare, and financial services,' the company said. For a more unified experience, the company allows its enterprise clients to integrate Contact Center and Zoom Phone. This would enable a customer care agent to transfer, forward, and record calls within the same environment. The agent would also have access via Contact Center to Zoom Phone user details such as extensions, Direct Inward Dialing (DID) numbers, and usernames in order to identify inbound calls and route them accordingly. In a statement, Sameer Raje, general manager and head of India & SAARC region at Zoom, said, 'Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center are purpose-built to work seamlessly together to empower organizations to deliver unified communications and superior customer and employee engagement. With this launch, we are excited to help businesses streamline collaboration, support flexible workforces, and enhance employee and customer experiences.' 'This expansion also reflects the growing traction Zoom Phone is receiving, especially from multinational companies, as businesses in India move away from legacy PBX systems toward more flexible, AI-first collaboration solutions that enhance employee productivity,' said Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of Product and Engineering, Zoom.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Zoom Rises 8% in 3 Months: Here's Why You Should Buy the Stock Now
Zoom Communications, Inc. ZM shares have gained 7.6% in the trailing three months, outperforming the Zacks Computer and Technology sector and the S&P 500 index's return of 4.8% and 0.9%, respectively. The stock has also outperformed the Zacks Internet – Software industry's growth of 1.1% in the same time outperformance can be attributed to the company's accelerating AI-driven innovation, which is reshaping productivity workflows across enterprises. From the rapid adoption of Zoom AI Companion to multi-product deals with Global 2000 firms, Zoom's platform expansion and improved churn rates have reaffirmed investor confidence in its near-term growth trajectory. The share price rise does not tell the whole story. Let's delve deeper into two factors driving ZM's growth to understand why the stock is a buy now. Zoom faces competition from legacy platforms like Cisco Systems' CSCO Webex and bundled productivity suites, such as Microsoft's MSFT Teams and Alphabet's GOOGL Google Workspace. While Cisco Systems' Webex and Microsoft Teams offer video meetings, messaging and file sharing, Alphabet's Google Workspace integrates Meet with email, calendar, chat, and collaboration tools in a unified platform. Zoom Communications, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Zoom Communications, Inc. Quote To differentiate itself, Zoom is doubling down on AI innovation to enhance productivity and customer value. One of its key growth drivers in the fiscal first quarter was its expanding portfolio of AI-powered tools. Adoption of Zoom AI Companion grew nearly 40% quarter over quarter, with usage expanding beyond meeting summaries to include answering questions, scheduling, content creation and more. Raymond James, a U.S.-based financial services firm, recently announced that it is rolling out AI Companion meeting summaries firm-wide, highlighting the product's enterprise also began monetizing its AI offerings through Custom AI Companion, launched in the fiscal first quarter. Early feedback from Global 2000 trial customers has been positive, with particular interest in features like 'Bring Your Own Dictionary,' meeting summary templates, and Jira integration. Zoom's enterprise segment showed solid momentum in the fiscal first quarter, with enterprise revenues growing approximately 6% year over year and accounting for 60% of total revenues, up two percentage points from the prior year. The number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenues rose 8% year over year, representing 32% of total revenues in the fiscal first wins underscore this momentum. The Boston Celtics upgraded to Zoom Workplace Enterprise Plus and adopted Zoom Phone and Workvivo. A leading financial institution signed a deal exceeding $1 million in ARR, consolidating its tech stack by replacing Microsoft Teams and other tools with Zoom's AI-first platform. For the second quarter of fiscal 2026, Zoom expects total revenues between $1.195 billion and $1.2 billion. Revenues in constant currency are expected to be between $1.196 billion and $1.201 billion. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share are anticipated to be between $1.36 and $1.37. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal second-quarter revenues is pegged at $1.2 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 2.96%. The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $1.37 per share, suggesting a year-over-year decline of 1.44%.ZM beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings in each of the trailing four quarters, with the average surprise being 9.46%. Zoom has strengthened itself in a competitive market as an AI-first platform. Additionally, its solid momentum across the enterprise segment in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, driven by continuous platform expansion, signals strong upside potential. ZM currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), suggesting a compelling entry point in the stock for investors now. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Zoom Communications, Inc. (ZM) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research
Cision Canada
20-05-2025
- Business
- Cision Canada
Bell Canada and Zoom team up to deliver leading workplace collaboration solutions for Canadian businesses Français
Bell and Zoom are partnering to offer Workplace from Bell and Zoom, a unique suite of communication and collaboration services for Canadian enterprises. Workplace from Bell and Zoom integrates leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools as a core functionality in all packages, delivering greater value for customers. The partnership reinforces Bell's commitment to deliver best-in-class services and solutions that meet the productivity and collaboration needs of all Canadian businesses. MONTRÉAL, May 20, 2025 /CNW/ - Bell, Canada's largest communications company, and Zoom, a global leader in workplace communications, today announced a partnership to offer Workplace from Bell and Zoom, an open collaboration platform with AI Companion, available to Canadian enterprises exclusively through Bell. This relationship reinforces Bell's objective to provide innovative, reliable, and secure AI powered communication solutions that empower businesses to thrive in today's dynamic work environment. With its AI-first capabilities built-in to every product and not "bolted-on" to existing features, Workplace from Bell and Zoom empowers businesses with a variety of needs and levels of expertise. From organizations with limited technical proficiency seeking a simple, easy-to-deploy collaboration solution to those with dispersed employees requiring external calling capabilities and hybrid work support, Workplace from Bell and Zoom makes it easy to integrate and operate. Launching exclusively for Canadian customers, Workplace from Bell and Zoom will complement existing Bell services, offering a comprehensive and user-friendly experience with a cutting-edge collaboration platform designed to boost productivity and collaboration. Key features include: Simplified Communication across teams and departments with calling, integrated video conferencing, messaging, and file sharing. Enhanced Productivity with tools designed to improve workflow and collaboration. Flexible Workstyles that support hybrid and remote work models with seamless connectivity and communication tools accessible from any device. Robust Enterprise-grade Security designed to protect sensitive business information without compromising user experience. AI-First Capabilities (Zoom AI Companion), leading functionality included in all packages, to help users get more done, do better work, and strengthen relationships through task automation and enhancing overall productivity. "Workplace from Bell and Zoom is an important milestone within our digital-first mission, elevating Bell's set of collaboration solutions for businesses across all segments and requirements. We've worked together to deliver a comprehensive suite of tools to empower Canadian customers with the seamless and secure communication and collaboration experiences they need to thrive in today's dynamic environment." - John Watson, Group President, Bell "This partnership with Bell represents a truly unique opportunity to bring the power of the Zoom platform to the Canadian market. We're excited to work alongside Bell to deliver a solution that's not only innovative but also specifically tailored to the needs of Canadian businesses. This collaboration sets a new standard for enterprise collaboration in Canada." - Graeme Geddes, Chief Sales and Growth Officer, Zoom "Workplace from Bell and Zoom will deliver significant productivity gains for Canadian businesses facing challenges with scalability and flexibility of communications tools. With 64% of Canadian organizations struggling in these areas, and 57% needing a platform that fully integrates calling, meetings, and messaging, this solution addresses a critical market need. Further reinforcing this, 76% of Canadian IT decision-makers prefer purchasing communications solutions from trusted telecom providers, making Bell Canada a natural choice." - Elka Popova, VP and Senior Fellow, Frost & Sullivan Workplace from Bell and Zoom powered by Canada's largest network with Bell, will be available nationally this year. ABOUT BELL Bell is Canada's largest communications company [1], providing advanced broadband Internet, wireless, TV, media and business communication services. Founded in Montréal in 1880, Bell is wholly owned by BCE Inc. To learn more, please visit or Through Bell for Better, we are investing to create a better today and a better tomorrow by supporting the social and economic prosperity of our communities. This includes the Bell Let's Talk initiative, which promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day and significant Bell funding of community care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives throughout the country. To learn more, please visit
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q4 Earnings Roundup: Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) And The Rest Of The Video Conferencing Segment
As the Q4 earnings season wraps, let's dig into this quarter's best and worst performers in the video conferencing industry, including Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) and its peers. Work is becoming more distributed, both across geographies and devices. In order for businesses to keep functioning efficiently, they need to be able to communicate as well as they did when the teams were co-located, which drives the demand for integrated communication platforms. The 4 video conferencing stocks we track reported a mixed Q4. As a group, revenues beat analysts' consensus estimates by 1.1% while next quarter's revenue guidance was in line. Amidst this news, share prices of the companies have had a rough stretch. On average, they are down 25.8% since the latest earnings results. Started by Eric Yuan who once ran engineering for Cisco's video conferencing business, Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) offers an easy to use, cloud-based platform for video conferencing, audio conferencing and screen sharing. Zoom reported revenues of $1.18 billion, up 3.3% year on year. This print was in line with analysts' expectations, but overall, it was a mixed quarter for the company with accelerating growth in large customers but full-year EPS guidance missing analysts' expectations significantly. 'In FY25, Zoom AI Companion emerged as the driving force behind our transformation into an AI-first company, enabling our customers to discover enhanced productivity opportunities. As Zoom AI Companion becomes increasingly agentic, we look forward to continuing to help our customers fully realize the benefits of AI and discover what's possible with AI agents,' said Eric S. Yuan, Zoom's founder and CEO. Zoom delivered the weakest full-year guidance update of the whole group. The company added 93 enterprise customers paying more than $100,000 annually to reach a total of 4,088. Unsurprisingly, the stock is down 6.5% since reporting and currently trades at $75.82. Read our full report on Zoom here, it's free. Started in 2001, Five9 (NASDAQ: FIVN) offers software-as-a-service that makes it easier for companies to set up and efficiently run call centers to offer more tailored customer support. Five9 reported revenues of $278.7 million, up 16.6% year on year, outperforming analysts' expectations by 4%. The business had a strong quarter with an impressive beat of analysts' EBITDA estimates and a solid beat of analysts' billings estimates. Five9 scored the biggest analyst estimates beat, fastest revenue growth, and highest full-year guidance raise among its peers. The stock is down 38.5% since reporting. It currently trades at $25.73. Is now the time to buy Five9? Access our full analysis of the earnings results here, it's free. Founded in 1999 during the dot-com era, RingCentral (NYSE:RNG) provides software as a service that unifies phone, text, fax, video calls and chat in one platform. RingCentral reported revenues of $614.5 million, up 7.6% year on year, in line with analysts' expectations. It was a slower quarter as it posted EPS guidance for next quarter missing analysts' expectations significantly and a miss of analysts' annual recurring revenue estimates. As expected, the stock is down 18% since the results and currently trades at $25.24. Read our full analysis of RingCentral's results here. Founded in 1987, 8x8 (NYSE:EGHT) provides software for organizations to efficiently communicate and collaborate with their customers, employees, and partners. 8x8 reported revenues of $178.9 million, down 1.2% year on year. This number was in line with analysts' expectations. More broadly, it was a slower quarter as it recorded a slight miss of analysts' billings estimates. 8x8 had the weakest performance against analyst estimates and slowest revenue growth among its peers. The stock is down 40.2% since reporting and currently trades at $1.71. Read our full, actionable report on 8x8 here, it's free. As a result of the Fed's rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, inflation has come down from frothy levels post-pandemic. The general rise in the price of goods and services is trending towards the Fed's 2% goal as of late, which is good news. The higher rates that fought inflation also didn't slow economic activity enough to catalyze a recession. So far, soft landing. This, combined with recent rate cuts (half a percent in September 2024 and a quarter percent in November 2024) have led to strong stock market performance in 2024. The icing on the cake for 2024 returns was Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. Presidential Election in early November, sending major indices to all-time highs in the week following the election. Still, debates around the health of the economy and the impact of potential tariffs and corporate tax cuts remain, leaving much uncertainty around 2025. Want to invest in winners with rock-solid fundamentals? 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