Oracle and AWS trumpeted how their clouds helped Zoom scale. But it turns out Zoom fears its cloud bills and uses co-located kit

Videoconferencing darling Zoom has issued a prospectus it hopes will raise $1.5bn, and which also reveals that it may be less dependent on the cloud than its suppliers have trumpeted. The document also reveals that it’s struggling to buy the servers it needs and that free Zoom sessions have – surprise! – cost the company plenty …

[Phil O'Sophical]

With a lot of caching?

We currently serve our users from various co-located data centers located throughout the world.

https://xkcd.com/908/

[Anonymous Coward]

"But in December 20202"

Damn AWS and zoom are still around in 20202.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re; In 20202...

How do you think the Terminators communicate?

Skype?

[gerryg]

taken as a whole - Zoom rocks

Somewhere else on this site we read that software vendors are conducting audits on hospitals.

Here we read that Zoom have lifted restrictions on schools use during the current times. I don't know about you but I've found the free one-to-one a godsend and the 40 minute restriction on group chat not much of a problem during family get togethers. Some Go clubs have bought licences for about £12/month and hosting multiple meet-ups to keep the game alive till we can get back to staring at each other across the board feeling jealous about The Queen's Gambit.

I don't really know how Zoom makes any money but they seem a fairly decent lot.

[BenDwire]

Re: taken as a whole - Zoom rocks

I can't help thinking that if they had a lower cost tier for 'family users' they could claw back some of their expenditure. £12 per month is simply too much to spend talking to the out-laws.

But how many people would pay (say) £25 per year just to raise that 40 minute limit to (say) 2 hours, but with a limited maximum group size of (say) 10? I know I would.

[gerryg]

Re: taken as a whole - Zoom rocks

After the 40 minutes timeout (you get a 10 minute warning) you can just re-start. Think of it as an opportunity to have a coffee break from the out-laws.

[BenDwire]

Re: taken as a whole - Zoom rocks

Indeed so, and most of us use it for a loo break / drink refill ! But having the unlimited sessions over Christmas (and last March) were a much more relaxed experience - I think I drank less too!

[skeptical i]

Re: taken as a whole - Zoom rocks

No doubt, Zoom works for many people (else they would not have such revenue). However, others have noted the company's dodgy past actions (in fairness, corrected once pointed out, but arguably should never have been authorized and done in the first place) and prefer to give it a miss as long as other options exist. Horses for courses, YMMV, and so on.

[rjed]

Why am I not surprised?

... PR/Marketing folks in AWS/Oracle/elsewhere making tall claims about their products which may not "entirely" be true. Is there any other way to play this game? The onus as always is on the customers/consumers to interpret/validate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why am I not surprised?

Zoom grew quickly so it's entirely possible that they started with Oracle - they were certainly cheap for a while.

But Oracle doesn't have the footprint of AWS so some services were moved to AWS. Then we see the PR people playing silly games.

And finally we have Azure being used for some functionality, I would speculate due to licensing advantages.

Now we just have to wait for Oracle to throw up their white flag, refuse to move to AWS/Azure because of on-going spats between Larry and others and all Oracle customers end up in Google to complete the set.