AWS claims most of Zoom runs on AWS, not on Oracle

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has issued a rebuttal to Oracle’s claim that the videoconferencing application Zoom runs on Oracle Cloud in preference to the AWS cloud.

According to AWS, Zoom has used the AWS cloud for back-office traffic for a long time, while using its own servers for real-time traffic. According to a Q&A with Zoom executives - forwarded by AWS - the service has moved a large quantity of real-time video-conferencing traffic to AWS since the pandemic struck, and has also placed a lesser amount of capacity on the Oracle Cloud.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan clarified, explaining that Zoom historically handled real-time videoconferencing traffic in “its own data centers” [presumably meaning equipment in colocation spaces], and hosted pre-meeting and post-meeting data on AWS. He said, “Our real-time traffic always stayed inside our own data center[s] for our paid customers.” The story is similar at other real-time services such as Netflix - which handles back-office functions on AWS and streaming data on its own hardware at colocation sites.

During the pandemic crisis, Zoom had to move some of its real-time traffic to AWS, said Yuan: “During this pandemic crisis, every day is a new record. Our own existing data center[s] really cannot handle this traffic. ”This meant that AWS spun up thousands of new servers for Zoom every day, he said: “Several months ago, Amazon really offered great support to us. Andy and his team offered tons of server size, and every night added 5,000 to 6,000 servers… a lot of servers to help us worldwide.”

Zoom is also using Oracle, he pointed out, describing the company as a “great customer” – i.e. one which is using the Zoom services. However, the level of usage of Oracle is apparently less.