3 Reasons Why Zoom Is Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

This week, Oracle announced that Zoom is now using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to support its core video conferencing service. As the world is adapting to forced remote work culture due to pandemic, Zoom has registered unprecedented growth. Well, the reason for this huge growth is it is used for a variety of use cases, including virtual parties, online classes, corporate meetings, and surprisingly even for the recent NFL draft. With increasing demand, it is no surprise that Zoom needed to manage its cloud capabilities and the company is betting on Oracle Cloud for that.

Oracle will not be the only cloud provider

To clear all the confusion, Zoom isn’t running all of its video conferences in the Oracle Cloud. Well, AWS is and will continue to be its primary cloud provider, and the majority of Zoom’s processing requirements will be taken care by AWS. Zoom leadership should be appreciated for the decision as they certainly needed a second cloud provider.

Wait, but Zoom was already running a small portion of its workload on Microsoft Azure. What Zoom did is instead of using Azure for scaling requirements, it bets on Oracle. On the other hand, Zoom could have used Google Cloud Platform (GCP) instead of Oracle but the company overlooked the next two cloud leaders after AWS. Well, we never know the reason and clearly Zoom won’t be interested in sharing that.

Strain on Azure and GCP’s infrastructure

Azure and GCP have managed to retain the second and third position in cloud providers market.  

One reason that might have pushed Zoom towards Oracle is the cloud capabilities strain showed by both Azure and GCP’s infrastructure since the world went quarantine and started remote work.

Is it due to the competition?

Another reason that steered Zoom away from Microsoft and Google is that both compete with Zoom. For the facts, Google has Hangouts and Microsoft has Teams. Well, if you might have used all three products then Teams is the biggest competitor for Zoom. Google has never managed to establish its Hangout app as go to product for online video conferencing even being rolled out earlier than Teams. As a matter of fact, AWS has Chime (an online video conferencing service) which is better than Hangouts.

Oracle’s Performance and Support

So, if both the above-mentioned reasons do not convince you. Then you can take Zoom CEO Yuan’s words. He said, “We chose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure because of its industry-leading security, outstanding performance and unmatched level of support.”

The decision to use Oracle’s services is not a backstab on AWS. Zoom direly needed a second cloud provider as Reuters in a recent article mentioned that Zoom has 217,000 terabytes a month of traffic flowing through it. So, AWS will continue to be vital for Zoom’s cloud requirements but Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will be handling some of the video meeting traffic.