Zoom One bundles services to draw single-vendor customers

Zoom has bundled its phone, chat, whiteboard and video conferencing services into a single product that addresses customer demand for all-in-one collaboration packages.

In June, Zoom started selling Zoom One plans that replaced the company's video meeting licenses. The move could save businesses money if they had previously subscribed to Zoom Phone and Zoom Whiteboard services separately.

The combined offering reflects the company's aim to evolve from a video conferencing company to a collaboration platform provider, Zoom president Greg Tomb said in a statement.

"It was clear that introducing new packaging like Zoom One was the next step in the company's evolution," he said.

Zoom One hits the market as companies look to consolidate their communication services around a single vendor, according to Zeus Kerravala, analyst at ZK Research. The pandemic forced companies to buy collaboration services quickly from multiple vendors. As a result, it's not unusual to find companies using Zoom for video, RingCentral for phone calls and Slack for chat.

"I've talked to a lot of companies that want to consolidate those down to one vendor," Kerravala said. "[Companies] are spending arguably four or five times as much as they need to."

Zoom released its product package after competitors Microsoft and Cisco released similar bundles for Teams and Webex, respectively. Offering more attractive pricing could be critical if the nation enters a recession due to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates to lower high inflation, according to analysts.

In June, a Morgan Stanley survey of 100 CIOs found that collaboration software would be one of the most likely areas for cost cutting, trailing only data center buildouts, consulting services, and desktop and laptop purchases.

The current economic uncertainty has had an effect on tech spending. Gartner estimated that the growth in global IT spending will fall to 4% next year from 9.5% this year.

Zoom One comes in six tiers:

• Zoom One Basic. Basic is a free offering that includes 40-minute video meetings of up to 100 participants. The bundle comprises Zoom Chat, real-time transcription and limited Zoom Whiteboard use.
• Zoom One Pro. Pro provides all the above, but with a 30-hour meeting time limit. The plan costs $149.90 per year, per user.
• Zoom One Business. Business increases the meeting participant limit from 100 to 300, features unlimited Whiteboard use and has an annual per-user price of $199.90.
• Zoom One Business Plus. Business Plus includes Zoom Phone. The plan has a price tag of $250 per user, per year.
• Zoom One Enterprise and Zoom One Enterprise Plus. The two Enterprise plans feature up to 500 or 1,000 video meeting attendees and Zoom webinar features. Zoom did not provide pricing for the Enterprise tiers.

With the Zoom One release, the company improved translation in its video conferences. Zoom can translate 11 languages: English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian. Translations in the user's chosen language appear as captions during a meeting. The feature is available with the Zoom One Business Plus and Enterprise Plus plans.

Mike Gleason is a reporter covering unified communications and collaboration tools. He previously covered communities in the MetroWest region of Massachusetts for the Milford Daily News, Walpole Times, Sharon Advocate and Medfield Press. He has also worked for newspapers in central Massachusetts and southwestern Vermont and served as a local editor for Patch. He can be found on Twitter at @MGleason_TT.