Zoom Global Partner Program Growth Continues

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the launch of our Master Agent Referral Partner Program, we are looking back at a year of change, challenge, opportunity, and growth across all of our Global Partner Programs in 2020. The Zoom partner ecosystem has been, and remains, a key focus area as our partners continue to help drive adoption of the Zoom platform while expanding their own businesses.

Let’s take a look back at how Zoom’s partner programs have progressed over the last year, and where these programs are headed in the future:

With increased demand for cloud collaboration platforms in the past year due to the pandemic, our partner program saw significant expansion and increased momentum across the globe. Through our partnerships with value-added resellers (VARs), Master Agents, service providers, carriers, and independent software vendors (ISVs), we were able to hit the following milestones: 

• Partner sales bookings increased over 7x fiscal year-over-year
• Over 20% of our international business bookings in the past quarter were driven by our partner ecosystem
• Zoom’s Master Agent business was the fastest growing in history for Master Agents Avant and Intelisys

 2020 was a year of growth for Zoom, and while much of that growth came through traditional direct procurement, it’s important to understand the value that our partner community played in delivering Zoom’s platform to our global business customers. There are a few particular regions and verticals we would like to highlight for fiscal year 2021 contributions:

• Channel partners in Japan attributed to approximately 40% of our Japan business
• 70%+ of our US Federal Government business was due to channel partners

Each of our partner programs has had its own unique impact on the business, creating new opportunities for growth, partnerships, and expansion. Here’s how each of our partner programs have contributed to our business over the last year: 

Our carrier partnerships have grown and developed dramatically in recent months. By partnering with carriers such as British Telecom, Lumen Technologies, and Orange Business Services, we have seen proliferation in the adoption of Zoom Phone. The value these partners bring is tremendous, especially when considering large global enterprise business customers.

We’re proud to have new partnerships in our Distribution Partner Program, including Carahsoft Technology Corp. in the US, Nuvias Unified Communications across Europe, eLink Distribution AG in DACH, West Telco in LATAM and EMEA, SYNNEX/Westcon in LATAM, SB C&S in Japan, and FVC in the Middle East and Africa. These distributors help drive adoption of the Zoom platform and ensure customers get the best possible communications experience while serving as key VARs in select markets. We will also continue to onboard new distributors in key international markets.

Our national and international resellers are critical  to our strategy in how we approach specific markets, which is why we’ve partnered with key VAR’s in each region who have local expertise and customer reach.

Since our announcement of an expanded Referral Partner Program into Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in September 2020, we’ve reached several milestones to celebrate.

Two US-based partners, AVANT Communications and Intelisys, a ScanSource company, have both reached one million dollars in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) prior to the one-year anniversary of our partnership. On both accounts, this is a record-breaking achievement for UCaaS vendors in their portfolio.

We have also dramatically grown this partner community, adding six new Master Agent partners: AppSmart, Bridgepointe, eLink Distribution, PlanetOne, Sandler Partners, and Telecom Consulting Group (TCG).

Our ISV partners are critical in helping Zoom further our platform offering by creating applications and products that leverage our API and SDK. In 2020, we revamped our ISV program and saw explosive growth, with an increased number of use cases in telemedicine, virtual events, and health and fitness that required a video-first unified communications platform. We now support over 200 partners through our open API and SDK.  We will continue to see new industries and markets being developed on top of Zoom which has opened a new chapter in our growth.

In 2021, Zoom is committed to investing in our partner community. As we continue to build our partner programs, we will remain focused on three key pillars: increasing sales alignment, ease of doing business, and partner profitability.

First, the number of Zoomies dedicated to supporting our partner community will continue to grow across sales, operations, programs, marketing, and more. Our investments in our workforce are at the core of Zoom’s values as we remain focused on delivering customer and partner happiness.

Next, we want to deliver a simple, seamless experience for our partner community to transact with Zoom. You will see improvements across operations as we hone in on driving system improvements and automation, enablement as we build additional training and qualification tracks, and programs as we deliver new methodologies for feedback, partner advocacy, and engagement.

Our end goal is to deliver a platform that partners can build a profitable business around. Whether that’s through our opportunities for app development with APIs and SDKs, software integration, or sales and delivery services, we’re dedicated to providing innovative programs, and you will continue to see our partner offerings grow in the coming year.

We want to thank our partners for all that you have done in collaboration with our teams, and we are excited to see what the future holds for our partnership.

Not yet a Zoom partner? Learn more or apply at zoom.us/partners.