Zoom Closes Series A Financing and Unveils Unified Meeting Experience

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Zoom (http://zoom.us) - Zoom Video Communications today announced it has closed Series A funding and has introduced the first Unified Meeting Experience (UMX) cloud service that enables HD video meetings and mobile screen sharing for up to 25 people on desktops, tablets and smart phones.  In the first five months since initial launch, Zoom has connected more than 400,000 people, 130,000 meetings, and 1,000 businesses, in over 2,500 cities worldwide.

Zoom closed its Series A funding from Qualcomm Inc., acting through its venture investment group, Qualcomm Ventures and individual investors- Jerry Yang, Subrah Iyar, Dan Scheinman, Bill Tai and several others.  Zoom will be demonstrating UMX at the MacIT/MacWorld 2013, being held in San Francisco this week, continuing its innovation in ease of use, quality of end-user experience and exceptional affordability.  

Current video conferencing solutions are room-centric, not user-friendly and expensive to maintain and operate. With UMX, Zoom is the first to introduce a 3-in-1 meeting platform, mobile-screen sharing, a hybrid cloud service and at 1/10th the cost of current solutions.

"Zoom has taken a high-quality and ease-of-use approach to transform the real-time collaboration experience for companies of all sizes," said Eric S. Yuan, CEO and Founder.  "UMX is a comprehensive 3-in-1 and scalable platform that fosters more effective communications across businesses and geographic boundaries."

"Three key pieces to the business desktop video puzzle are:  a quality experience, exceptional ease of use and a full set of business class capabilities. Zoom's quality and ease of use were already getting noticed. Zoom's new UMX service delivers, exceeding our expectations, at a disruptive price," said David Maldow, Analyst, Telepresence Options.

First 3-in-1 Meeting Platform:  UMX is a powerful cloud service that offers innovative HD video conferencing features such as multi-user, multi-screen, active speaker, spotlight speaker and dynamic layout along with leading web meeting features such as instant meetings, one-click screen sharing, host controls, join by URL, calendaring and recording.  In addition, UMX is the first to fully "mobilize" these features – so you have a similar experience across tablet and mobile devices.

Mobile Screen Sharing:  UMX is the first cloud service with mobile screen sharing for both tablet and mobile devices. Anyone can now screen-share a Dropbox or Box document, a website or photos from an iPhone or iPad without the need for a PC.

Hybrid Cloud Service: UMX is the first cloud service to offer businesses the ability to run meetings in the company network using the Zoom Meeting Connector. As a hybrid cloud service, a user initiates the meeting in the public cloud while meeting traffic including video, voice and data sharing goes through the private cloud. This provides additional control for network traffic and instant backup from the public cloud.

Some key UMX features:

• Up to 25 people
• HD video and HD voice
• High quality screen sharing
• Instant or scheduled meeting
• Recording and playback
• Private or group chat
• Host controls
• Public or hybrid cloud
• Single sign-on
• REST API for web integration
• Mac, Windows, iOS and Android

Plans and Pricing:

Personal Plan is free:

• Unlimited minutes for 1-to-1 meetings
• 40 minutes duration for up to 25 people

Business Plan is $9.99/host per month

• Unlimited minutes for up to 25 people

Enterprise Plan is $9.99 or Education Plan is $0.99 per month

• Per host or per room
• Unlimited minutes for up to 25 people
• Branded webpage
• Single sign-on
• Hybrid cloud service

To start your free meetings, please visit http://zoom.us or download the Zoom app from Apple iTunes or Google Play.

Supporting Quotes:

Wade Chambers, EVP Engineering of Proofpoint

"Zoom continues to innovate on real-time communications with their unmatched quality and ease of use. They are the first and only company in the world today to successfully integrate meetings, video and mobility into a remarkably simple-to-use, yet powerful service."

Paul Cooley, CEO, FCTI
 

"Zoom presents an opportunity for us to replace our costly traditional video conferencing system with a streamlined cloud-based service.  UMX offers a perfect combination of HD video, screen-sharing and ease of use to help evolve group meetings to an interactive experience."

Allan Chen, CIO, Menlo College

"We are excited to work with Zoom to offer the first-of-its-kind service to our community.  We think that the enhanced interaction and engagement that the platform provides will be of great impact on education and collaboration."

About Zoom

At Zoom Video Communications, our mission is to develop a people-centric cloud service that unifies your meeting experience and improves the quality and effectiveness of communications forever.  Zoom Video Communications is a privately held company headquartered in Santa Clara, California.  For more information please go to: http://zoom.us or follow us @zoom_us.

SOURCE Zoom Video Communications