Zoom Video Communications Inc. is hoping to make workers more productive with the general availability of Zoom Apps, which enables people to use dozens of third-party tools from directly within its platform.

The new offering was announced today alongside a new online event hosting platform, called Zoom Events, that enables businesses to stand up interactive, virtual events and engage with their audiences.

The Zoom Apps are a new type of application now available from the Zoom App Marketplace that was launched last year. Zoom Apps integrate third-party applications directly within the Zoom Meetings client. That’s different from the existing apps in the Zoom Marketplace, which instead bring Zoom Meetings into those third-party apps.

“Zoom Apps are in-meeting/in-product apps allowing you to use third-party apps within Zoom Meetings, whereas integrations from the Zoom App Marketplace integrate Zoom into third-party apps,” the company explained. “You can browse the list of available Zoom Apps and add the ones you want from within Zoom Meetings, Zoom desktop client, and the Zoom App Marketplace. Access your favorite third-party apps directly within Zoom Meetings, with the ability to expand or collapse your apps in meetings so you have more room to collaborate.”

The company said there are more than 50 Zoom Apps available at launch. On the productivity side, examples of Zoom Apps include Asana, which makes it possible to create in-meeting action items and create, edit and assign tasks, during a Zoom Meeting. Dropbox Spaces, meanwhile, provides a shared workspace for meeting participates to collaborate in real-time, and SurveyMonkey Enterprise makes it possible to capture live feedback through surveys and polls of Zoom Meeting participants.

There are more than a few lighter Zoom Apps too. For instance, Heads Up! is said to be the “perfect party game” to play with colleagues to pass the time while waiting for a meeting to start. Another one is Wellness That Works, which periodically generates push notifications for meeting participants that remind them to stand up and stretch every now and again. It also provides a “hydration tracker and mindset tools” with the idea to help participants build and maintain healthy habits.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the ability for users to embed third-party apps into Zoom’s platform is crucial if the company is to keep up its strong momentum. “It will drive more utilization of its platform, and therefore greater scale,” he said.

Zoom does need to find a way to keep growing. The company enjoyed stunning growth over the last year as the COVID-19 pandemic led to more people relying on its platform. But that growth is now starting to wane, forcing the company to get more creative.

One way it’s doing that is with the new Zoom Events platform, which looks to be an attempt by the company to generate more revenue beyond its traditional subscriber base.

With Zoom Events, Zoom said, businesses and organizations can create experiences such as conferences, sales summits, trade shows, customer and internal events that take place entirely in the virtual world. The platform can also be used to facilitate so-called hybrid events, which combine both the physical and the virtual world.

Features in Zoom Events include event hubs, dedicated corporate virtual event spaces, customizable registration and networking through a chat-enabled virtual event lobby. The platform also offers event-specific reporting on things such as registration, attendance and ticket sales.

If Zoom Events sounds familiar, that’s because it offers many of the same features as OnZoom, which is Zoom’s existing, consumer-focused virtual event platform. Currently in beta, OnZoom enables small businesses and individuals to host online events such as fitness classes, cooking classes and such.

“Zoom has been missing in the virtual event space,” Mueller said. “Zoom Events is a key offering that will allow Zoom to participate in the growth of digital events.”

Frost & Sullivan Inc. analyst Roopam Jain said he believes Zoom Apps and Zoom Events will be critical components that broaden Zoom’s offering and reach. “They empower users to accomplish more with video communications and are a testament to Zoom’s focus of enabling customers to create and grow businesses entirely on its platform,” he said.

Today’s product launches come just days after Zoom announced it will spend $14.7 billion to acquire the cloud contact center provider Five9 Inc. Zoom said it wants to combine Five9’s contact center-as-a-service offering with its communication platform in order to build what it says will be the “customer engagement platform of the future.”

Photo: Zoom