The Zoom Revolution: 10 Eye-Popping Stats from Tech’s New Superstar

Few if any companies in any industry and under any circumstances have ever experienced a quarter that can match what Zoom Communications and founder Eric Yuan have just been through.

We’ve all heard some of the stories and some of the numbers, but I want to share some details here. Because Zoom’s not only a high-scale user of cloud technology, but also a high-flying cloud-technology vendor as well.

In particular, Amazon’s AWS unit and Oracle’s cloud-infrastructure capabilities played starring roles in Zoom’s extraordinary quarter. (On the Cloud Wars Top 10, Amazon is #2 and Oracle is #6.) Both companies rushed in during the period to help Zoom meet demand that was surging at rates that are hard to fathom.

So if anybody tries to tell you that all this cloud stuff is all just a lot of hype, feel free to share these details with that person. Well, first try to engage them in a bet, and *then* lay these stats on them. From Zoom’s June 2 earnings call for its fiscal Q1 ended April 30:

1. Customer growth of 354%.

Zoom deployed “millions” of licenses for new customers in the quarter, with its category of “customers with more than 10 employees” spiking 354% year over year.

2. Big banking customer goes all-in on Zoom.

A large bank that had not done business with Zoom before deployed about 175,000 new Zoom enterprise licenses in the quarter.

3. Stunning sequential growth.

Among the Global 2000, usage by customers grew more than 200% sequentially—not year over year, but compared to the quarter ended January 31.

4. In 4 months, 30X growth in daily participants.

In December 2019, Zoom had 10 million daily meeting participants. Just 4 months later, in April 2020, more than 300 million daily meeting participants were using Zoom.

5. 100 billion to 2 trillion in just 3 months.

Each month, Zoom calculates its annualized run rate for meeting minutes. For January, that figure was 100 billion. Just 3 months later, it was 2 trillion meeting minutes based on April’s annualized run rate.

6. Amazon provisioned thousands of servers daily.

From Yuan’s opening remarks on the earnings call: “Immediately during the crisis, our longtime partner AWS and its CEO Andy Jassy enabled us to meet this rapidly increasing demand. As our demand increased and we had limited visibility into the growth, AWS was able to respond quickly by provisioning the majority of the new servers we needed, sometimes adding several thousand a day for several days in a row.”

(And for some insight on Oracle’s role in helping Zoom keep up with that soaring demand, check out Can Larry Ellison Turn Zoom & Autonomous DB into Big-Time Oracle Cloud Revenue?.)

7. Revenue soars 169% to $328 million.

Pre-pandemic, Zoom had guided for $201 million. Of that huge actual increase, new customers accounted for 71% of the increase.

8. Big businesses are beating a path to Zoom’s door.

For the quarter, Zoom finished with 769 customers paying Zoom more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenue, up 90% from Q1 a year ago. 

9. Gorging on global growth.

Revenue growth rate for the Americas was 150%, while revenue for APAC and EMEA (combined) grew at 246%. As a result, APAC and EMEA now contribute about 25% of Zoom’s revenue.

10. The rocket ride will continue.

After responsibly saying that forecasts in today’s troubled climate are difficult to make, Zoom offered Q2 guidance of $495 million to $500 million for the three months ending July 31. If Zoom can hit that $500-million target, that would represent a staggering sequential growth rate of 52.4%.

You can view the entire Zoom earnings-call transcript at Motley Fool’s excellent transcript service.

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