Skip to main content

In surprise choice, Zoom hitches wagon to Oracle for growing infrastructure needs

With the company growing in leaps and bounds, Zoom went shopping for a cloud infrastructure vendor to help it with its growing scale problem. In a surprising choice, the company went with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Zoom has become the go-to video conferencing service as much of the world has shut down due to the pandemic, and life needs to go on somehow. It has gone on via video conferencing with Zoom growing from 200 million active users in February to 300 million in March. That kind of growth puts a wee bit of pressure on your infrastructure, and Zoom clearly needed to beef up its game.

What’s surprising is that it chose Oracle, a company whose infrastructure market share registers as a strong niche player in Synergy Research’s latest survey in February. It is well behind market leaders including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and even IBM (and that’s saying something).

Brent Leary, who is founder at CRM Essentials, says he sees this as a move to show that Zoom can move beyond the SMB market to power enterprise customers, no matter what they demand.

“I think Zoom went with Oracle because they are proven in the enterprise in terms of mission critical apps built on Oracle databases running on Oracle hardware in the cloud. Zoom needs to prove to enterprises that they are able to handle scale and data security needed to beyond what SMBs typically require,” Leary told TechCrunch.

In addition, Leary speculated that Oracle might have given Zoom a good deal to get a hot company into the fold and beat rivals like Amazon and Microsoft.

Others have speculated that it might have to do with keeping business away from a potential rival given that Amazon with Chime, Google with Hangouts and Microsoft with Teams all have competing products. However, none of them have become synonymous with online meetings as Zoom has during this crisis.

Zoom went public last year and has become the darling of the video conference market since in spite of a set of security issues that have developed as the company scaled, which they have been working to address.

The stock market is apparently not impressed with the choice. As we went to publish, the stock was down 3.38% or $5.56.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2y5krGM
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Apple’s AI Push: Everything We Know About Apple Intelligence So Far

Apple’s WWDC 2025 confirmed what many suspected: Apple is finally making a serious leap into artificial intelligence. Dubbed “Apple Intelligence,” the suite of AI-powered tools, enhancements, and integrations marks the company’s biggest software evolution in a decade. But unlike competitors racing to plug AI into everything, Apple is taking a slower, more deliberate approach — one rooted in privacy, on-device processing, and ecosystem synergy. If you’re wondering what Apple Intelligence actually is, how it works, and what it means for your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’re in the right place. This article breaks it all down.   What Is Apple Intelligence? Let’s get the terminology clear first. Apple Intelligence isn’t a product — it’s a platform. It’s not just a chatbot. It’s a system-wide integration of generative AI, machine learning, and personal context awareness, embedded across Apple’s OS platforms. Think of it as a foundational AI layer stitched into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and m...

The Silent Revolution of On-Device AI: Why the Cloud Is No Longer King

Introduction For years, artificial intelligence has meant one thing: the cloud. Whether you’re asking ChatGPT a question, editing a photo with AI tools, or getting recommendations on Netflix — those decisions happen on distant servers, not your device. But that’s changing. Thanks to major advances in silicon, model compression, and memory architecture, AI is quietly migrating from giant data centres to the palm of your hand. Your phone, your laptop, your smartwatch — all are becoming AI engines in their own right. It’s a shift that redefines not just how AI works, but who controls it, how private it is, and what it can do for you. This article explores the rise of on-device AI — how it works, why it matters, and why the cloud’s days as the centre of the AI universe might be numbered. What Is On-Device AI? On-device AI refers to machine learning models that run locally on your smartphone, tablet, laptop, or edge device — without needing constant access to the cloud. In practi...

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT