Zoom Looks to the Channel to Accelerate Growth

Zoom Video Communications this week announced an expanded channel program intended to significantly expand adoption of a Zoom cloud-based collaboration platform.

Most of the sales of the company’s core services have come from direct sales. But Zoom now sees an opportunity to expand its presence in a hotly-contested field by relying more on indirect sales, says Laura Padilla, head of business development and channels for Zoom.

“About 10 percent of our sales today are through the channel,” says Padilla.

Zoom has been experiencing triple-digit growth largely based on direct sales. But Padilla says it’s clear a more robust channel program will accelerate that growth further. Zoom currently has roughly 300 partners, including reseller agreements with both IBM and AT&T.

That formal channel program includes an expanded partner portal that features more deal registration, marketing, and training resources; new reseller price list with product bundles focused on helping partners drive customer sales; streamlined discounting process for all partners; joint marketing programs, certifications, sales enablement tools. Zoom is also committing to hosting partner summits to facilitate networking, training and provide updates to product roadmaps.

Zoom has already established a distribution relationship with Ingram Micro and, as of this week, Tech Data, adds Padilla.

The primary advantage Zoom has offer rivals is that it has been designed from the ground up to support video collaboration versus rival platforms designed to share files such as Microsoft PowerPoint.

Many of the partners Zoom signs up first discover the platform as an end user before determining they can make money reselling Zoom services, notes Padilla.

Collaboration applications, for all intents and purposes, are now primarily delivered via the cloud. That requires solution providers to be able to monetize cloud services using a recurring revenue model based on annual contracts. It remains to be seen how many partners will ultimately be successful making that transition.

In the meantime, the good news is providers of cloud services are more anxious than ever to rely on channel partners to both sign up new customers and renew annual license contracts, all of which are costs most cloud services providers have discovered they would rather offset.