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How the Zoom Video Product Dominates Video Conferencing
021-bu-zoom-product-02
. [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I'm your host, Mike passings. I'm the CEO of QUALITANCE and we have a brand new series here for you. Today. We're going to do a big, deep dive into the world of. Zoom video. That's right. We're going to decode their product, their business. We're going to look at it from upside down, from left to right.
You name it. We're going to look at it because these guys are on fire. They are doing so very well. So we want to break it down and look at some of the practical learnings are for us as builders, creators, designers, entrepreneurs who are trying to build a better future. And you know what? Zoom is doing a lot of things right?
And there is a lot to learn. Are they as hot as say, Revolut our last case study? Who [00:01:00] knows? But there's going to be a ton to learn. We're going to have the classic four PS, people, product, profit and promotion. We're going to break it all down and see what we can learn to build great products too. So stay tuned.
This is the bottom up podcast. Okay, so we're going to start with the product. Uh, the first and most important of all the peas. And. When we think about zoom and we think about its product, I've got lots of things that come to mind, but I, I've kind of compressed it into three big ideas. Now, the first one, it's going to sound a little self evident, but the fact is here, the first idea about why is this product so good.
It's because they're video first. Now, this becomes particularly important when you think about it in context to its competitors. Zoom is built, designed, managed to be a video first product. It is not an old audio product that has had video put [00:02:00] on top of it. It is born a video product from day one. So what this means is everything is about delivering the very best video when you're in a, you know, a conference call or whether you're in a, uh, something a lot bigger, uh, uh, as a women.
So what I did is I hunted around and research and I found that few tests that really reflected my own experience as well. And that is this. Particularly, uh, Skype and even more so Google Hangouts, I find that I'm often presented with really poor video quality, and especially when there's more than two of us on the, on the call.
And, uh, what I've actually been able to do is. I found a video where a group of people actually did the same meeting at the same time in different platforms. So we can see the difference. And the big thing that this calls out is the pixelation of Google Hangouts. Now, when you compare that same meeting now [00:03:00] done in zoom.
All you, all of a sudden you see that the picture quality, the F, their little refinement on the pixels is much, much better. So I want to point out, this is just like a small thing, like the video, I guess on Google Hangouts is. I dunno. Good enough. Ish. It's okay. But what happens with a company like Zune?
They do lots and lots of lots and lots of things that are better, and it's if one is a little bit better and then the second one's a little bit better, all of a sudden if you zoom out, you get this aggregate experience of. All around. The product is just better on so many fronts. So if you look at the difference between the same meeting done in Hangouts versus what you're going to see is just a better video quality, and this just adds up over time.
There's a few things that zoom. Um, can be, um, can [00:04:00] improve. But for the most part, they're doing so many things just that bit better than everybody else. When you actually step back, it's really a significant difference. Now, if you introduce a large scale video conferencing events, so we're talking 30, 40, 50.
Plus people. Zoom stands alone, all the others you're going to experience, first of all, limitations on actually putting that many people in. And if you can, the video's really compromised and we're going to talk about that in some of the technical pieces of, of this case study, because there's actually some really straightforward technical reasons why other products are really inferior.
When we look at scale. So zoom one-on-one. It's good. Zoom at scale with lots and lots of people is absolutely great market leader, and that's really the first big thought that they are video first. Okay. Second number thought. Now. What you have to remember. This is all a bunch of [00:05:00] first actually for the product.
The other thing that they're really first with is they are cloud first. So they are not tied down to legacy technologies that are not designed and built, uh, for the cloud. Classic example is Skype. In order to deliver its video and some of these other features. It's actually got our SharePoint architecture.
And if any of you are old as I am, you'll remember that SharePoint is certainly not a cloud first technology. This creates all sorts of limitations in terms of scale and so forth. So what's really interesting is if you look. At being a cloud based application. What's so uniquely strong about the cloud and the way it performs is it helps you scale.
And what I've been able to do is just break down what Skype is doing in their application architecture that helps them scale. So very much. And remember. December 10 million [00:06:00] sessions a day, April, over 200 million and the thing didn't fall over. So this is worth really, really learning from. Number one, they just have a better network.
What they actually do is they use a distributed network, and this is not unsimilar to how Netflix delivers great quality. Uh, Netflix puts these media appliances in it, the ISP close to the delivery point. So it's a distributed, in the same way a zoom has over 13 data centers, and each of them are trying to work really hard to distribute the workload.
So there's not like, um, to use a traffic analogy, you don't have a one highway, which is trying to deal with all the traffic it's distributed across. I network. The next thing is that they use this thing called multimedia routing, and this helps them deliver more than one stream at a time. Now this feature directly goes back to the first thought, how they do like these really high volume high attendee.
[00:07:00] Coles. It's this feature. So what happens is this multimedia routing enables not just one, but several video streams between people to be used, distributed concurrently. So what does that mean? It means you can have lots of people in a call and the call quality, the video quality is good. Now when we think about particularly the last mile, the third thing that they do is they use this multi bit rating coding.
So what happens is if it's really congested in your local network, maybe at home or by the office, they'll drop the bit rate or the file size that they're trying to deliver of all the audio and video. Um, so that is less load on the network. It has better chance of getting through. So they're adapting, uh, even at that last mile moment.
And what that means is it's just more consistent as an experience for us, the happy users. And the last thing that they do is they have a replication layer that manages the quality of service. The fact that you, you could imagine almost oversees the [00:08:00] three other points that I mentioned. The network. The multimedia routing, the multi bit rating, coding.
Um, it looks at all of those things in managers, the overall to ensure that they're really delivering a, an experience that we, uh, not only expect, but I think that w that we love frictionless as they would say. So the last point here, so we're still in product. We've got the fa...
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By Mike Parsons
4.5
22 ratings
021-bu-zoom-product-02
. [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast. I'm your host, Mike passings. I'm the CEO of QUALITANCE and we have a brand new series here for you. Today. We're going to do a big, deep dive into the world of. Zoom video. That's right. We're going to decode their product, their business. We're going to look at it from upside down, from left to right.
You name it. We're going to look at it because these guys are on fire. They are doing so very well. So we want to break it down and look at some of the practical learnings are for us as builders, creators, designers, entrepreneurs who are trying to build a better future. And you know what? Zoom is doing a lot of things right?
And there is a lot to learn. Are they as hot as say, Revolut our last case study? Who [00:01:00] knows? But there's going to be a ton to learn. We're going to have the classic four PS, people, product, profit and promotion. We're going to break it all down and see what we can learn to build great products too. So stay tuned.
This is the bottom up podcast. Okay, so we're going to start with the product. Uh, the first and most important of all the peas. And. When we think about zoom and we think about its product, I've got lots of things that come to mind, but I, I've kind of compressed it into three big ideas. Now, the first one, it's going to sound a little self evident, but the fact is here, the first idea about why is this product so good.
It's because they're video first. Now, this becomes particularly important when you think about it in context to its competitors. Zoom is built, designed, managed to be a video first product. It is not an old audio product that has had video put [00:02:00] on top of it. It is born a video product from day one. So what this means is everything is about delivering the very best video when you're in a, you know, a conference call or whether you're in a, uh, something a lot bigger, uh, uh, as a women.
So what I did is I hunted around and research and I found that few tests that really reflected my own experience as well. And that is this. Particularly, uh, Skype and even more so Google Hangouts, I find that I'm often presented with really poor video quality, and especially when there's more than two of us on the, on the call.
And, uh, what I've actually been able to do is. I found a video where a group of people actually did the same meeting at the same time in different platforms. So we can see the difference. And the big thing that this calls out is the pixelation of Google Hangouts. Now, when you compare that same meeting now [00:03:00] done in zoom.
All you, all of a sudden you see that the picture quality, the F, their little refinement on the pixels is much, much better. So I want to point out, this is just like a small thing, like the video, I guess on Google Hangouts is. I dunno. Good enough. Ish. It's okay. But what happens with a company like Zune?
They do lots and lots of lots and lots of things that are better, and it's if one is a little bit better and then the second one's a little bit better, all of a sudden if you zoom out, you get this aggregate experience of. All around. The product is just better on so many fronts. So if you look at the difference between the same meeting done in Hangouts versus what you're going to see is just a better video quality, and this just adds up over time.
There's a few things that zoom. Um, can be, um, can [00:04:00] improve. But for the most part, they're doing so many things just that bit better than everybody else. When you actually step back, it's really a significant difference. Now, if you introduce a large scale video conferencing events, so we're talking 30, 40, 50.
Plus people. Zoom stands alone, all the others you're going to experience, first of all, limitations on actually putting that many people in. And if you can, the video's really compromised and we're going to talk about that in some of the technical pieces of, of this case study, because there's actually some really straightforward technical reasons why other products are really inferior.
When we look at scale. So zoom one-on-one. It's good. Zoom at scale with lots and lots of people is absolutely great market leader, and that's really the first big thought that they are video first. Okay. Second number thought. Now. What you have to remember. This is all a bunch of [00:05:00] first actually for the product.
The other thing that they're really first with is they are cloud first. So they are not tied down to legacy technologies that are not designed and built, uh, for the cloud. Classic example is Skype. In order to deliver its video and some of these other features. It's actually got our SharePoint architecture.
And if any of you are old as I am, you'll remember that SharePoint is certainly not a cloud first technology. This creates all sorts of limitations in terms of scale and so forth. So what's really interesting is if you look. At being a cloud based application. What's so uniquely strong about the cloud and the way it performs is it helps you scale.
And what I've been able to do is just break down what Skype is doing in their application architecture that helps them scale. So very much. And remember. December 10 million [00:06:00] sessions a day, April, over 200 million and the thing didn't fall over. So this is worth really, really learning from. Number one, they just have a better network.
What they actually do is they use a distributed network, and this is not unsimilar to how Netflix delivers great quality. Uh, Netflix puts these media appliances in it, the ISP close to the delivery point. So it's a distributed, in the same way a zoom has over 13 data centers, and each of them are trying to work really hard to distribute the workload.
So there's not like, um, to use a traffic analogy, you don't have a one highway, which is trying to deal with all the traffic it's distributed across. I network. The next thing is that they use this thing called multimedia routing, and this helps them deliver more than one stream at a time. Now this feature directly goes back to the first thought, how they do like these really high volume high attendee.
[00:07:00] Coles. It's this feature. So what happens is this multimedia routing enables not just one, but several video streams between people to be used, distributed concurrently. So what does that mean? It means you can have lots of people in a call and the call quality, the video quality is good. Now when we think about particularly the last mile, the third thing that they do is they use this multi bit rating coding.
So what happens is if it's really congested in your local network, maybe at home or by the office, they'll drop the bit rate or the file size that they're trying to deliver of all the audio and video. Um, so that is less load on the network. It has better chance of getting through. So they're adapting, uh, even at that last mile moment.
And what that means is it's just more consistent as an experience for us, the happy users. And the last thing that they do is they have a replication layer that manages the quality of service. The fact that you, you could imagine almost oversees the [00:08:00] three other points that I mentioned. The network. The multimedia routing, the multi bit rating, coding.
Um, it looks at all of those things in managers, the overall to ensure that they're really delivering a, an experience that we, uh, not only expect, but I think that w that we love frictionless as they would say. So the last point here, so we're still in product. We've got the fa...