Zoom has announced plans to extend its strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), selecting it as its preferred cloud provider.

The announcement follows that Zoom would be shifting a portion of its cloud infrastructure to Oracle Cloud due to an unprecedented surge in new users following the announcement of lockdown restrictions earlier this year.

Announced in late April, the deal saw Oracle join major cloud rivals AWS and Microsoft Azure in providing support to Zoom. However, AWS managed to retain the bulk of the workload, and it seems its efforts have not gone unnoticed.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan credited AWS with helping the platform manage “unprecedented global demand this past year”.

“We’ve been able to handle it in significant part by running the substantial majority of our cloud-based workloads on our preferred cloud provider, AWS, and relying on AWS’s performance and scalability,” he said. 

“Looking forward, we will continue to innovate alongside AWS to reinvent virtual collaboration and deliver secure and exciting experiences for our customers.”

Commenting on the announcement of the extended multi-year agreement, AWS CEO Andy Jassy said that “COVID-19 changed everything for Zoom, putting demands on the company to meet the video conferencing needs of hundreds of millions of new participants around the globe”.

“AWS was there from the beginning to ensure Zoom could scale to meet these new requirements virtually overnight,” he added.

AWS has been a long-term cloud provider for Zoom, having supplied the platform with necessary infrastructure since its launch in 2011.

“When organizations build on AWS – as Zoom has done since 2011 – they transform their business, expanding and innovating much faster. Together, Zoom and AWS have delivered great experiences for new Zoom users around the world, and we look forward to using the cloud to develop new ways to help the world communicate,” said Jassy.

The announcement comes weeks after the video-conferencing platform added a set of security features to help users combat ‘Zoom-bombing’ attacks. The new controls will help account holders remove unwanted guests and also spot if their meeting’s ID number has been shared online.