The Seattle based e-commerce giant, Amazon has recently launched a unified communications as a service (UCaas) app, Chime.
The app specification comprises of options for scheduling online meetings, updates on meeting attendees, user friendly accessibility with Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows, data sharing and unobstructed voice and video calls. The Chime app offers basic (free), plus ($2.50 per user per month) and pro ($15 per user per month) version plans for its users.
Vice President of Enterprise Applications at AWS, Gene Farrell, stated, “It’s pretty hard to find people who actually like the technology they use for meetings today. Most meeting applications or services are hard to use, deliver bad audio and video, require constant switching between multiple tools to do everything they want and are way too expensive.”
He further added, “Amazon Chime delivers frustration-free meetings, allowing users to be productive from anywhere. And with no ongoing maintenance or management fees, Amazon Chime is a great choice for companies that are looking for a solution to meetings that their employees will love to use.”
Amazon is currently trying to make an impact by entering the already established UC market with contenders like Cisco, WebEx, Google Hangouts, Microsoft’s Skype for Business, as well as pure-play Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) providers like RingCentral, 8×8, and Fuze.
According to the market statistics, the cloud based unified communications (UC) industry is rapidly advancing with an estimated value of $12 billion in 2016. It is predicted that the UC market is bound to expand up to 15% to $22 billion by 2020.
The e-commerce giant will face its biggest competitors, Microsoft and Google who are currently leading the UC platform. Microsoft provides apps like Office 365 and Skype for Business whereas Google offers G Suite and Hangouts.
Well know analyst at Gartner, Bern Elliot said, “Amazon is slowly amassing a digital workplace portfolio.” He further explained, “If you take the long view, which Amazon certainly does, they want to position themselves as a broader enterprise partner and be able to talk to customers not only about their infrastructure, but applications too. Microsoft and Google can have those conversations, and Amazon would like to be able to too.”
