Educators, parents and students were most challenged by the system glitches, with thousands starting virtual school via the platform that day. Explore Thousands reported Zoom outage Monday on the first day of virtual school for many Grade schools, high schools and universities are relying on Zoom and competing technologies such as Microsoft Teams for virtual lessons to reduce the chance of infection during the pandemic. Zoom Video Communications became a familiar tool to millions of new users after the spread of COVID-19 made face-to-face meetings risky. Zoom went public in April 2019.