By Sara Castellanos 

Zoom Video Communications Inc. is expanding its cloud computing vendors to include Oracle Corp., to help meet the soaring demand for remote conferencing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Zoom began deploying services from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in March. The videoconferencing company is now transferring more than 7 petabytes of data, equivalent to about 93 years of high-resolution video, through Oracle's servers daily, according to a statement from Oracle Tuesday. Oracle declined to comment and financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Zoom's number of daily participants grew to more than 300 million last week, up from 10 million at the end of last year, said Brendan Ittelson, Zoom's chief technology officer. "With that rapid growth in daily users on our platform, we needed to scale our infrastructure," Mr. Ittelson said.

The company's customers are using remote conferencing for a variety of activities, ranging from work and family meetings to educational programs and weddings, he said.

Oracle is now one of the cloud providers Zoom relies on to support its services, along with Amazon.com Inc.'s Amazon Web Services and other undisclosed public clouds. Zoom also maintains its own data centers, Mr. Ittelson said.

Zoom chose Oracle's cloud in part because of its benefits in security, scalability and performance, Mr. Ittelson said. This month, the company hired dozens of outside security consultants to quickly address questions about security flaws. The Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning in March about videoconference hijacking, spurred in part by incidents on Zoom's platform.

San Jose, Calif.-based Zoom is one of many enterprise companies using multiple cloud vendors, representing a trend that's been in existence for the past three years, said Craig Lowery, vice president analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.

The Zoom and Oracle deal is "more of a marketing win than it is a tech win," said Mr. Lowery, whose expertise is in cloud computing. "Oracle needs a hot brand like Zoom in its customer list to improve their positioning in the cloud market," he said. Meanwhile, the deal represents an opportunity for Zoom to have more influence with an industry leader like Oracle, which puts Zoom in a better competitive position and gives the company access to Oracle's customers, he said.

"Zoom became a household name literally overnight because of this pandemic," Mr. Lowery said. "A partnership with a large player like Oracle is a big win."

Write to Sara Castellanos at sara.castellanos@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 29, 2020 13:24 ET (17:24 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Oracle Charts.
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Oracle Charts.