At Zoom, we are constantly innovating and evolving our platform to deliver frictionless solutions that meet our users’ current and future needs and bring them happiness. We understand that the way people connect, learn, work, collaborate, attend events and much more has fundamentally changed, and going forward, the best of virtual and in-person experiences will come together to maximize productivity, flexibility and inclusivity.
As we look to the future, we are focused on continuing to execute on our strategy that is evolving Zoom into a broader communications platform that provides users what they need to grow their businesses.
Like the future of work, we believe that the future of events will include a combination of virtual and in-person formats. Whether it is a large trade show, corporate summit, internal event or online classes, our customers will need a holistic solution that provides them with what they need to confidently build, host and manage virtual and hybrid events.
We wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the progress we have made this year to enhance our events offerings, including the acquisition of certain assets of Liminal.
Zoom Video Webinars
We introduced Zoom Video Webinars in 2014 to enable organizations to share important information and interactive video presentations with up to 50,000 people from anywhere and from any device. And in 2021, we rolled out new features, like pronouns, live language interpretation, and interactive hand gestures and reactions, to make Zoom Video Webinars more inclusive, accessible, and engaging.
Zoom Events
To address the needs of organizations all over the world that required their events to have a virtual element, we unveiled Zoom Events in July 2021. Powered by Zoom’s reliable video and chat technology, Zoom Events is a one-stop solution for customers to confidently build, host, and manage a virtual or hybrid event, creating an experience that attendees will love.
To showcase some of Zoom Events’ exciting new capabilities, we utilized the new Conference event type for Zoomtopia 2021, our second all-virtual conference that saw more than 33,000 guests attending from around the world. With Conference, the new event type empowers event planners and hosts to organize multi-session and multi-day events in a sophisticated format, with rich functionality, including event lobby, chat, networking, sponsors, surveys, recordings, analytics, and more.
Zoom Event Services
Zoom Event Services, also announced in 2021, helps organizations plan, support, and produce the best virtual, live, and hybrid events on Zoom. Zoom’s professional event services team can help an organization execute its event from offering technical support, in-event moderation, complex event coordination or the highest level of production. This team has helped to put on some of the highest-profile virtual and hybrid events in the world over the past several years.
Strategic Investments in Cvent and American Express Global Business Travel
Also in July 2021, we made a strategic investment in Cvent, a leading provider of enterprise event technology and Zoom customer, as part of Cvent’s plans to become a public company. Our organizations have a long track record of working together as technology partners and as users of each other’s solutions. We believe that Cvent’s event technology is complementary to what we offer as a video communications leader, and what excites us about Cvent’s platform is its capabilities for in-person events.
Earlier this month, we made an investment in American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), a leading B2B travel platform, as part of GBT’s entrance into the public markets. GBT’s innovative and engaging virtual, face-to-face, and hybrid meeting and event experiences offer the best-in-class technology solutions for meetings and events in the new hybrid world. The high demand for our own events platform, Zoom Events, continues to highlight how businesses are eagerly looking to adopt the right technology and for their event experiences, which is why we look forward to working together with GBT.
Acquisition of Liminal Assets
With virtual and hybrid events here to stay, users will need best-in-class tools to professionally produce their programs and performances online from anywhere in the world. As part of our ongoing efforts to offer these solutions, we are pleased to announce that we recently acquired certain assets from Liminal, a startup company that offers event production solutions built largely on Zoom’s SDK. Two of Liminal’s co-founders, Andy Carluccio and Jonathan Kokotajlo, will also join Zoom. Liminal’s solutions, including their ZoomOSC and ZoomISO apps, will help bridge Zoom with traditional and emerging event control applications and hardware to help theaters, broadcast studios, and other creative organizations address complex technical production needs, and collaborate and create online effectively.
Amongst other things, Liminal’s software can connect multiple HD video feeds from Zoom to production-grade hardware and applications. By adding these capabilities and more to our events management and production offerings, we believe we will continue to be the leading comprehensive, one-stop, hybrid events management platform in the market. We will cover the entire value chain from creative production, broadcasting, editing, and fully customizable live event experiences with robust pre-event planning, in-event management, and post-event analytics.
Looking Ahead
We continue to work tirelessly to expand our platform and capabilities to cater to a broader range of needs when planning, producing and managing events of all types, including virtual and hybrid events. With these exciting developments, and many more to come, we’re confident that Zoom is well positioned to provide more dynamic and customizable event offerings solutions to our users.
