In this article, we are reviewing Zoom Application which is an online video-conferencing application. Here you will get a quick review about Zoom Video Conferencing application. As in table of content, we will try to cover all prospectives of Zoom Application including its history, spec requirements, features, pricing, pros and cons and overall review of Zoom Cloud Meeting Application.
What is Zoom and who created it?
Zoom is an American innovation company. It provides video communication and online chat administrations through a cloud-based peer-to-peer program stage. Their services are utilized for teleconferencing(conference call services), working from home, remove instruction, and social relations.
Like, google conference call services application(i.e., Google Meet), the Zoom application is available for both desktop and mobile phones. It is also available in the form of a web application. So it offers a high range of flexibility. The company established on April 21, 2011, by Eric Yuan(present CEO) in San Jose, California.
History Of Zoom creator and evolution of today’s Zoom desktop application
Eric Yuan is a former corporate president for Cisco Webex. He left Cisco in April 2011 with forty engineers to begin a modern company, initially named Saasbee, Inc. The company had inconvenience finding financial specialists since numerous individuals thought the video communication advertise as of now immersed.
In June 2011, the company raised $3 million of seed cash from WebEx author Subrah Iyar, previous Cisco SVP and Common Guide Dan Scheinman, and wander capitalists Matt Ocko, Symbol of TSVC, and Charge Tai. In May 2012, the company changed its title to Zoom. By September 2012, Zoom propelled a beta adaptation that seems to have conferences with up to 15 video members.
With the start of November 2012, the company marked Stanford College as it, to begin with, the client. The benefit was propelled in January 2013 after the company raised a $6 million Arrangement A circular from Qualcomm Wanders, Yahoo! author Jerry Yang, WebEx originator Subrah Iyar, and previous Cisco SVP and Common Direct Dan Scheinman. Zoom propelled adaptation 1.0 of the program, permitting the first number of members per conference call services to be 25. By the tip of its to begin with month, Zoom had 400,000 clients, and by May 2013, it had 1 million clients.
Specification Requirement
Zoom is cross-platform. That means, it is available for most major platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, IOS. Spec requirements differ according to your need and which system software you are using, meaning if you have android, the spec requirement is different than those who use IOS. And the same applies to Windows, Linux, Mac, Chrome OS.
It also offers its services through browsers using their extensions. Coming to the needs, if you are the host of the meeting and you want to store your session locally in your machine, then extra space is required on your computer. Similarly, if you’re going to use a green screen, then for you, the requirements are different. If you want to know more about the system requirement, then please prefer going to the official website of zoom. The official website to show you the spec requirement are:
- System Requirements for zoom room: Zoom System Requirements
- System Requirements for Zoom for the virtual environment: Zoom system requirements for virtual environment
- Download link for various platforms: https://zoom.us/download
Features of Zoom Application
- Virtual Background: It allows users to hide clutter, eliminate distraction, or highlight branding when they are in a meeting.
- Calendar Integration: The zoom scheduler extension allows user to schedule their meeting and use calendar when they are in a meeting
- Waiting Room: Waiting room allows the user to know who is coming to the meeting by enabling the Waiting Room feature and deliberately admitting user participants for increased security.
- Multi-Share: Real-time collaboration is easier than ever when multiple people can share their screens at the same time. If you have two monitors, enable the dual monitor’s option in your Zoom settings to view the two most recently shared screen side by side.
- Personal Meeting Room: A Personal Meeting ID (PMI) reserves a virtual meeting room just for you! Customize your PMI and room settings to serve your meeting needs better.
- Easy to use as users can enter the room through a publicly shareable link, and joining does not require any software.
- Admin Feature controls
- Full-Screen View
- Partner Integration, Hybrid cloud servicing, Toll-based option
Criticisms of Zoom application and its conference call services
Zoom faced much criticism for the highly glazing problem of privacy, security, and poor design choice. It resulted in heightened scrutiny of its software. The company lacks transparency and good security practice. The main reason that people don’t trust Zoom is the fact they initially claimed their software to be end-to-end encrypted on their marketing materials. Later they changed to “from Zoom endpoint to Zoom endpoint,” which means that effectively between Zoom servers and Zoom clients.
In March 2020, A. D, New York State Attorney General Letitia James issued an inquiry into Zoom’s privacy and security practices. The conflict came to an end on May 7, 2020, where Zoom didn’t accept the allegations, but still, they declared to make it more secure. This kind of criticism can be beneficial for its other competitor, like google conference call services(Google Meet).
Free Paid Features
Pricing and feature in price basis
According to the need of users, the zoom is available in a free and paid version. In the paid version again, users can choose to use different plans according to their needs.
Free Features (Price: Free)
- Host Up to 100 participants
- Unlimited 1 to 1 meeting, 40 min limit on group meetings
- Unlimited number of meeting
- Ticket Support
- Also allows you to have video conferencing features, web conferencing features, group collaboration features, and security,
Pro Feature (Price: $14.99/mo.host)
- All Basic(Free) features
- Includes 100 participants (extra participants can join through extra charges according to the number of extra participants)
- User Management Features
- Admin Feature Control
- Reporting
- Custom Personal Meeting ID
- Assign Schedule
- 1GB of MP4 or M4A cloud recording
- REST API
- Skype for Business(Lync) interoperability
- Additional Add-on plans
Pro (Price: $19.99/mo/host)
- All-Pro Features
- Including 300 participants (extra participants can join through extra charges according to the number of extra participants)
- Dedicated phone support
- Admin Dashboard
- Vanity URL
- Option for on-premise deployment
- Managed domains
- Single Sign-On
- Company branding
- Custom Emails
- LTI integration
- Cloud Recording Transcript
- Additional Add-on plans
Enterprise (Price: $19.99/mo/host)
- All Business Features
- Enterprise includes 500 participants plus includes 1,000 participants
- Unlimited Cloud Storage
- Dedicated Customer Success Manager
- Executive Reviews
- Bundle Business Reviews
- Bundle discount on Webinars and Zoom Rooms
Note: There are more plans for different users with different demands and needs. For the further in-depth ideas, please prefer visiting the official pricing and planning page via the link: https://zoom.us/pricing
Popularity Of Zoom
Zoom was on the game since 2011 but came to action in 2013. The central rise of Zoom was not very early than in 2020 this year, where most countries were quarantined. Generally, Zoom provides services for conducting conferences and meetings. In meanwhile, there is a good competitor of Zoom, which is google conference call service like Google Meet.
We can see the stats that show how the popularity of Zoom rose one of the sudden.
Figure: Graph representing zoom application popularity
We can see the sudden spike in 2020 when most people used ZOOM to conduct classes and meetings.
Conclusion
Zoom is a communication technology company. It provides online video telephony services. It also provides online chat services via a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform. These services are applicable for conference call services, telecommuting, social relationships, and distance education. Like google conference call services, it also has outstanding features at a relatively cheap rate and is free for most things that are essential for a meeting. It has many pros and is necessary at the current time for things like meeting and classes. Though it has some security and privacy issues, it has promised to work on them and make it private and more secure.
