It looks like when it comes to cloud based collaboration ZOOM is pushing Cisco's WebEx and the Broadsoft off to a supporting, more legacy customer oriented role at Verzion and taking its seat at the table. It's also a big win for all OTT players when last week Verizon announced their choice of Zoom as a new collaboration partner, just rival AT&T has.
It's important to note that Zoom grew out of unhappy WebEx founders and team members who felt Cisco wasn't letting them innovate, so with the announcement they have in some ways detthroned their former master. For years Broadsoft and Cisco both have also touted the fact that Verizon is one of their biggest customers, as well as Verizon making it well known. That type of status often helped propel both into top positions in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, as the channel alignment of being the in-house solution, brought lots of customers to WebEx and Cisco Call Manager as well as Broadsoft. But with last week's announcement made by Verizon, the armor has been being pierced by the rising collaboration upstart. ZOOM has in reality matured, building a better product than WebEX or Broadsoft, and taken aim at the legacy suppliers of services that Verizon (and AT&T) have been offering. This should not be taken lightly.
The key here is that Verizon actually announced it, vs. Zoom making a one sided announcement. The differences are in the Verizon quote coming first and the fact that a Verizon PR person was listed as the contact. This is telling. It shows a few things, but mostly that the tides have shifted.
Verizon already has WebEx and also offered Broadsoft based solutions with prominent play on their website in the past.Those links now generate 404 errors for pages not found, another tell that Verizon is moving on from the past and looking towards more Cloud native solutions. By putting their weight behind ZOOM the way they did, sure looks likeVerizon is moving away from pushing Cisco WebEx as the single source solutions and opening the door to what their enterprise customers want, and in reality, have been using as an Over The Top (OTT) fashion.
What this also means is that point solutions have a future, if they meet the needs of the enterprise. Verizon is also looking less like being the landlord and more like being the broker of the services they offer. With ZOOM also in the phone business this really appears to be a bigger win for ZOOM and a striking loss for Cisco. The action would also appear to open up the door to the rising number of CPaaS players as well, who likely will strike deals with Verizon to sell solutions their customers need, which they don't want to build and offer.
The world is changing. The Cloud, faster speeds with 5G and greater mobility are the key, so with ZOOM winning these carrier accounts, they have officially gone from being enterprise cloud grade ready to carrier delivered. That's big.
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