Amazon Web Services is continuing its push into cloud services with the launch of a new Internet voice service competitor to Skype for Business, Slack, WebEx and GoToMeeting.
Called Amazon Chime, the new service is available for Android, iOS, MacOS and Windows, the company said. “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,” said Gene Farrell, vice president of enterprise applications at AWS.
Amazon is entering an extremely competitive space, but Chime sets itself apart from rival services with a couple of interesting new features. These include a visual roster of all the participants in a meeting, and also the ability to mute anyone who has distracting background noise interrupting the call. With no moderators in the actual meetings, each user has the ability to mute other participants so that others won’t be disturbed by barking dogs or some other noise. Users who are muted will receive a notification, but are free to unmute themselves when necessary if they wish to say something during the call.
Other features of Chime include being able to sign in with a single click and the ability to join calls from a regular telephone if access the application itself is not available. Later, AWS will add support for person-to-person phone calls over a regular telephone network.
Jeff Barr, AWS’s chief evangelist, said in a blog post that this is a new kind of unified communications service that will make meetings more efficient than ever before. “Amazon Chime lets you start high-quality audio and video meetings with a click. Once you are in the meeting you can chat, share content, and share screens in a smooth experience that spans PC and Mac desktops, iOS devices, and Android devices.”
Barr added that because Chime is offered as a fully managed service, there’s no need to deploy any software. Users just download the app and start using it. The service is free for one-on-one and video calls, while there are two premium options: Plus, which is priced at $2.50 per user per month and includes support for screen sharing and identity management services like Active Directory and SAML; and Pro, which is priced at $15 per user per month and allows for meetings with up to 100 participants.
Chime is just the latest in a line of new AWS applications aimed at helping business users get to work. Previously, the company launched WorkSpaces, a cloud virtual desktop as a service product, which includes the AWS WorkDocs office suite, WorkMail email service and QuickSight business intelligence platform.
Image courtesy of AWS
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