BigBlueButton vs Zoom

2023. Zoom partners with Anthropic to bring Claude chatbot to Zoom products



With the increasing prominence of generative AI, Zoom has recognized the importance of partnering with Language Model (LLM) companies to navigate the evolving AI landscape. In line with this strategy, Zoom has recently announced its collaboration with Anthropic, a partnership that will involve leveraging Anthropic's Claude chatbot on the Zoom platform, initially focusing on the Zoom Contact Center. The objective of this partnership is to enhance customer support by providing more accurate responses while minimizing instances where the models generate fictional answers in the absence of the correct response. Zoom plans to continue collaborating with the Anthropic model and gain a deeper understanding of its workings. Eventually, the intention is to incorporate this technology into other Zoom products. It is important to note that there is currently no specific timeline for the introduction of Anthropic-based functionality to the market. However, Zoom remains committed to ongoing development in this area.


2023. Zoom acquires employee communications platform Workvivo



Zoom has announced its intention to purchase Workvivo, an Irish startup that has been operating for six years with a focus on enhancing internal communication and culture within businesses. Unlike Zoom and other similar communication tools, Workvivo places a greater emphasis on asynchronous communication rather than real-time communication. Its platform is designed to promote employee engagement on a broader level, offering features such as an activity feed, people directory, surveys, and a channel for important company announcements, similar to a modern intranet. Workvivo has gained a notable customer base since its establishment in Cork in 2017, with companies such as Amazon, RyanAir, and Bupa among its clients.


2023. Zoom announces AI features that act as your personal assistant



Video conferencing provider Zoom announced new additions to its AI-powered tool Zoom IQ. The new features leverage OpenAI's Large Language Model, or LLM, to summarize meetings, generate recaps, and draft chat and email responses. On the heels of announcements from Microsoft, Google, and Slack, Zoom is the latest major productivity tool to get the AI treatment. Zoom IQ already uses AI to give users meeting information through chapters, highlights from recordings, and action items. But it is taking it a step further by integrating OpenAI's powerful generative AI model. If you're late to a meeting, Zoom IQ can summarize in real time what you've missed and ask questions for you. Using text prompts, it can generate brainstorms using Zoom's whiteboard tool.


2023. Zoom is adding new features to compete with Slack, Calendly, Google and Microsoft



Zoom is expanding its offerings to compete with a range of companies, including Slack, Calendly, Google, and Microsoft, by introducing new features such as AI-powered meeting summaries, prompt-based email responses, and whiteboard generation, in addition to video "Huddles" and a meeting scheduler. Zoom aims to encourage users to shift more of their work tasks to its platform, and as such, it is making its email and calendar clients available to everyone. The company had been testing these tools since last year as part of a broader push beyond meetings. Furthermore, Zoom is offering hosted email and calendar services with end-to-end encryption protection and custom domains for paid users, which could serve as an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and Google Workspace for businesses.


2022. Zoom dives deeper into intelligent customer service with Solvvy acquisition



Previous year Zoom wanted to buy Five9 to get into customer service. Eventually the deal fell apart, but Zoom’s desire to get into customer service one way or the other didn’t diminish. Earlier this year, the company announced a new customer service solution, which would take advantage of existing Zoom capabilities. By pulling together some existing functions, the company was able to offer a customer service experience inside the Zoom tool set. Now, the company announced plans to extend that by acquiring Solvvy, a nine-year-old startup that concentrates on conversational AI. With Solvvy, the company gets more automation and intelligence and the ability to clear routine questions without having to speak to a person.


2022. Zoom announces Zoom Whiteboard, gesture recognition among several updates



Zoom announced a slate of updates and new features, including a virtual whiteboard and gesture recognition. Among the updates is Zoom IQ for Sales, which uses AI to analyze calls. Zoom also added Gesture Recognition, which means that instead of clicking on a reaction you can raise a hand or put a thumbs up to display that reaction in the call. It’s only limited to those two gestures for now, and requires client version 5.10.3 or later. It’s disabled by default at the client level and you can enable it at the account, user or individual level.


2022. Zoom launches AI-powered features aimed at sales teams



Zoom has announced Zoom IQ for Sales, a product that uses AI to analyze sales meetings and deals to provide insights. It’s the company’s first explicit foray into sales automation software. In many ways, Zoom IQ for Sales is an outgrowth of Zoom’s increasing investments in AI. Zoom last May introduced an AI-powered feature that shows highlights from recorded meetings, automatically selecting the “best” parts of meetings based on keywords from audio transcriptions. The company more recently acquired Kites, a startup specializing in real-time translation and transcription.


2021. Zoom, Five9 Scrap $14.7 Billion Deal as Investors Vote No



Zoom Video Communications Inc. and Five9 Inc. scrapped their $14.7 billion merger agreement after a steep decline in Zoom’s shares slashed the deal’s value by almost a third, leading Five9 shareholders to reject the offer. Zoom sought to buy Five9, a call-center software provider, to bolster its popular videoconferencing app in the face of stiffening competition. Five9, based in San Ramon, California, makes cloud-based software that uses artificial intelligence to help companies answer questions from customers and interact with them regardless of language, location or device. Five9’s clients include brands like Under Armour, Citrix, Athena Health and Lululemon, according to its website.


2021. Zoom buys cloud call center firm Five9 for $14.7B



Zoom has agreed a deal to buy cloud call centre service provider Five9 for about $14.7 billion. The proposed acquisition is Zoom’s latest attempt to expand its offerings. In the past year, the video conferencing software has added several office collaboration products, a cloud phone system, and an all-in-one home communications appliance. The acquisition of Five9 — which has amassed over 2,000 customers worldwide including Citrix and Under Armour and processes over 7 billion minutes of calls annually — will help Zoom enter the “$24 billion” market for contact centers


2020. Zoom announces new Hardware as a Service offering



Zoom announced a new Hardware as a Service offering today that will run on the ServiceNow platform. At the same time, the company announced a deal with ServiceNow to standardize on Zoom and Zoom Phone for its 11,000 employees in another case of SaaS cooperation. For starters, the new Hardware as a Service offering allows customers, who use the Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms software, to acquire related hardware from the company for a fixed monthly cost. The company announced that initial solutions providers will include DTEN, Neat, Poly and Yealink.