Enhanced Zoom Up program promising more opportunities for partners

In 2026, Jacob Pereira, Head of APAC Partners for Zoom, foresees a focus on developing a new breed of partners from the enhancements to the Zoom Up partner program.

When Zoom launched its partner program, the goal of the program was to recruit partners and measure them on performance based on their bookings and to build a practice on their competencies. This meant enabling partners to make sure they have competency on Zoom’s products.

However, the vendor has now unveiled a more enhanced version of the program. Launched a month ago, the enhanced version of the Zoom Up program focuses on three specific categories with the objective of helping partners drive adoption and behavior of customers on how to use Zoom.

According to Jacob Pereira, Head of APAC Partners for Zoom, the enhanced version will look at partners on how the perform, including how they book customers, manage renewals and convert opportunities as well as customer retainment. The enhanced version will also look at partner proficiency.

“When we talk about proficiency, in the previous program we only measured them on competencies. What we've introduced this year is the services certification because a lot of our partners have the option to just want to do the services. Now the services certification entails Zoom Phone and Zoom Contact Center. And we're focusing on deployment capability and support capability. And then we also do accreditations for them, and they also need to participate in terms of some of the key boot camps, tech summits that we run,” explained Pereira in an interview with CRN Asia.

Pereira pointed out that the one thing that Zoom is really focused on with the channel ecosystem right now is automation, as well as enablement with the partners.

“We also have enhanced our partner portal. So, when you log into our partner portal, we have their badges, you can see capability of new content, micro learning videos, predominantly around our Zoom AI Companion because AI is huge. And a lot of partners right now, when you see shift in trends of the resellers, we're seeing a lot of the new partners coming in from legacy based on our AI story. They want to know how we are doing it differently, where's our leadership is in it and so on,” said Pereira.

The third enhancement to the program is participation. Pereira explained that this is to measure whether the partner is actually actively transacting with Zoom.

“So, we measure due registration, the joint investments we have in MDF and then also how they are leveraging our partner demand center to leverage campaigns. In terms of Zoom Phone, Zoom CX, and Zoom Events, we have campaigns based on the profile of the partners,” he added.

As such, the new point-based system for the Zoom Up program is around three vectors which are performance, proficiency and participation.

“This is where we will be focusing our program on. So, we've done the program around these three vectors; there will be a point-based system. If they did performance, they would get a certain level of points, proficiency a certain level of points, participation in a certain level of points. What do these points give them? They give them either a platinum status, a gold status, or a silver status. So, we're measuring them on that and then they have the capability now of building service practices,” added Pereira.

Comparing the situation from a year ago, Pereira added that Zoom has stepped up in terms of bringing that right structure on program and services for partners because they didn’t have services or accreditation the last time.

Zoom’s partner ecosystem in Asia

According to Pereira, the majority of the partners in Asia are resellers, which are either Tier 1 or Tier 2 resellers as well as distributors.

“I'm doing a two-distributor strategy in every country. We'll be announcing a new distributor in Singapore and also expanding that also in Korea and Australia. All that is to support our resale recruitment capability,” said Pereira.

In terms of feedback to the changes to program, Pereira mentioned that partners are starting to see the program driving different behavioral outcomes that they need to do with the customer, which they don't see in other programs.

Partners also found a lot about the enhancements by Zoom in the program that is now easier to use. Some of the stuff used to be given as sales collateral to salespeople, but now it's extended to partners.

“We also have a built-in partner locator in our program. So, the moment they can achieve the badge status, they will also be promoted by us in the portal. That is something that they are also looking forward to. So, we really revamped the partner portal. Our partners are actually saying they can transact more easily with us right now. And the way we achieve that is we announced something called a partner self-service. All our distributors now, who used to take a couple hours to process an order, can now do it in minutes. Now we're going one step further to offer distributors API capability, so that they can transact much quicker,” added Pereira.

Growing agency services

At the same time, Pereira also highlighted that Zoom has introduced agency services across the region. What’s interesting about the agency services is that the traditional UCaaS vendors in the competitive space predominantly started their business through agency because telephony was always an agency type of business.

“So today if a partner wants to come and refer opportunities, they can be from consulting background, they could be a partner that is a non-UCaaS partner, non-CaaS partner but they have the relationship where the customer says, hey I'm looking at a new fit out of a building, I want to look at the telephony system. That specific partner who's probably doing maybe the security outfit or just a think and refer.”

“Now for them, we will only train them to pitch Zoom, and they will pitch Zoom. They will register their opportunity and that opportunity then is treated like a resale opportunity as well. But in an agency opportunity, Zoom actually contracts the customer directly. This is actually growing for us significantly across APAC,” explained Pereira.

Citing the Indian market as example, Pereira pointed out that India was never an agency market. However, when Zoom Phone was announced last year, they increased their agency's penetration as well.

Focus in 2026

In 2026, Pereira foresees a focus on developing a new breed of partners from the enhancements to the partner program.

“AI is being a very big catalyst for us from that perspective. Customers are looking at our meeting summaries; they're looking at the capabilities we have on Zoom Phone, Zoom Revenue Accelerator, where now we also support a lot of translated languages. A lot of that is driving that shift. So, over the last one year, I would say we are now acquiring a lot of competitive partners coming into the program. They're also increasing to systems integrators,” said Pereira.

Pereira also shared that the focus in 2026 is going to be on the marketplace as well as developing an MSP type of program.

“We do have MSP capabilities, but we haven't formalized it into a program. We just announced a service provider program as well. So, we're going through that aspect to acquire new service providers. MSP is a different breed. They will need some of the marketplace integrations and so on. So those are things that we're focused on,” added Pereira.

In terms of market growth in 2026, Pereira firmly believes that Zoom is 100% focused on Southeast Asia as it’s the fastest growing market for them along with Korea as well.