Zoom Layoffs Impact Channel Executive Team, SalesZoom Layoffs Impact Channel Executive Team, Sales

Zoom layoffs will impact its now former global partnerships and alliances, Mark Jenkins, and more than 20 members of Zoom's professional services team who the unified communications vendor laid off this week, Channel Futures has learned from a source close to the matter.

Jenkins served just over two years with Zoom in various channel-related capacities. He was promoted to lead Zoom's global partnerships efforts just six months ago. Others impacted by Zoom layoffs include sales managers, sales executives, people in DevOps and security, with Zoom citing "cost-cutting measures," the source told us.

Mark Jenkins

Zoom had no official comment on the cuts to the channel executive team.

Zoom Continues to Compete with Microsoft

Irwin Lazar, president and principal analyst at research firm Metrigy, told Channel Futures that his firm's research shows the UCaaS market is in transition as Microsoft increases its market share.

"We still see plenty of opportunities for smaller providers, as well as for vendors like Cisco who are well established in the large enterprise, but the real engine for growth right now is in customer experience (CX)/contact center," Lazar said.

Metrigy's Irwin Lazar

He added that most of the leading UCaaS providers have shifted their focus to building their contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS)/communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS)/CX offerings to avoid direct competition with Microsoft, noting that Zoom is an outlier.

Related:Fresh Avaya Layoffs Hit Customer Success, Marketing Hard

"Zoom has been somewhat of an exception as they continue to compete head-on with Microsoft, as they expand Zoom Workplace capabilities into areas like employee experience, collaborative work, mail and task management," Lazar said.

Recent layoffs by companies in the tech sphere have employees on edge. According to a 2024 Tech Sentiment Report released by Dice, 60% more tech sector employees lost their jobs in 2024 compared to 2023. This year, expect layoffs to persist as companies look to restore pre-pandemic numbers.

According to Layoffs.fyi, 31 tech companies have cut more than 7,000 employees in 2025 so far, with Salesforce laying off 1,000 employees, amounting to 1% of its workforce, while Amazon laid off an undisclosed number of employees last month, as did Microsoft.