Zoom Adds Oracle to Its List of Cloud Providers
April 29 2020 - 01:39PM
Dow Jones News
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
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024