Amazon Lays Out Benefits of Chime SDK Partnership

With the number of offerings saturating the unified communications and collaboration (UCC) market, partner opportunities are a dime a dozen. While this is mostly true, there is one UCC tool that appears to garner less attention. That’s Amazon Chime SDK, which has a partner program. It’s a lesser-known player in the communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) arena.

Those partners are a part of the Amazon Partner Network, which consists of independent software vendors and system integrators helping companies of all sizes build, market and sell their offerings — all while extending business, full-fledged technical and go-to-market support for partners.

Amazon Chime enables video conferencing and online meetings, but also facilitates business calls both internally and externally. While the solution is highly customizable, according to Jennie Tietema, principal product manager, Chime SDK, it yields itself to the partner landscape, especially those who want to build hyper-custom solutions.

That means pairing those SDKs and APIs with various vendors to create a sort of Frankenstein solution that extends what Tietema calls “numerous advantages to partners and the organizations’ deploying said systems.”

Amazon’s Jennie Tietema

“Our service partners help us go higher up the stack because, while we work with builders directly, we also work with customers who perhaps don’t have that builder expertise, but still need differentiated heavy-lifting services within the voice and video space,” Tietema said.

Chime SDK Partner Capabilities

At its crux, Amazon Chime is a set of real-time communications components (CPaaS) that let users add messaging, audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities to their web and mobile applications.

Within the set of Amazon Chime SDKs and APIs, Tietema told Channel Futures that call analytics is a “hot area” right now. She further remarked that since launching its advanced call analytics features in March, partners have spent significant time building custom solutions with call analytics at the core.

“You know, we’re talking about Legos essentially. And how do you put these pieces together?” she continued, sharing that partners within the Amazon Partner Network have understood this notion sufficiently.

Concerning the advantages of the partner program, Tietema said that route-to-market for the Amazon Chime SDK is a prominent one, noting that Amazon has the resources – joint marketing materials, progressive product certifications, training, continuing education courses, etc. – to contribute.

“Being a Chime SDK Partner is a much broader relationship than just partnering,” said Tietema. “They get access to a vertical and horizontal focus that we have [for] our partners, as we don’t just focus on reselling or any singular aspect. We take a holistic partnership approach.”

AWS, Tietema told Channel Futures, is looking for partners in the “truest sense of the word,” as the firm wants to build what she calls a “genuine partnership.”