Amazon 'Chimes' In on Crowded Video Conferencing Services Market

**Editor’s Note: Click here for our recently compiled list of new products and services.**

By Kurt Marko

Not content to dominate the IaaS market for cloud infrastructure, Amazon has been easing into end-user business applications, first with its Workspaces desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and now with Chime, a UC service that combines voice, video, chat and online meetings.

Chime joins a crowded market with products from technology titans like Adobe (Connect), Cisco (WebEx), Google (Hangouts) and Microsoft (Skype for Business) as well as telecom giants like AT&T (Collaborate) and Verizon (Virtual Communications Express), and a host of pure-play vendors including 8×8, Fuze, join.me, RingCentral and Vidyo.

Given such a mature and diverse market, Amazon will have a challenge in making Chime stand out from the crowd. Still, its feature list does check all the important boxes; it introduces some innovative additions, plus it has the power, stability and reputation of AWS infrastructure standing behind it.

As expected of every IP-based communication service, Chime provides high-fidelity voice, video and text/chat services, both as peer-to-peer calls and group conferences. Group conferences, which can accommodate up to 100 people, support both live video and screen sharing, personalized meeting URLs, and recording. Chime is device-agnostic but built with mobile users in mind and includes native apps for Android, iOS, Mac OS and Windows, along with API integration to Google Calendar and Outlook for scheduling.

Indeed, Chime’s cross-platform integration borrows an idea from Apple’s Continuity and Windows Continuum by allowing attendees to start a meeting with one client and switch to another without dropping the connection.

Other intriguing Chime features include:

Chime is available now in three service plans:

Users can try the Pro plan for 30 days without charge, and like most AWS services, subscriptions are month-to-month with no long-term contract.

Tough Market to Crack

Chime provides a compelling blend of peer-to-peer and group collaboration features. While it can’t compete with dedicated Web conferencing services for large meetings, it adds convenience features they lack. And although Chime is less expensive than the pure-play collaboration services, most of which run in the $25-$40 range, it can’t compete with Skype for Business; thus, we expect Office 365 users won’t be interested. Instead, we expect that Chime will appeal to cloud-native companies that are already heavy AWS users, particularly those running its Workspaces DaaS product.

Although Amazon sells Chime directly to users, it obviously understands that many organizations will want other communications and IT services as part of a UC system, which explains why it has already partnered with Level 3 and Vonage to deliver Chime as part of their communications portfolio.

“By providing Amazon Chime to Vonage Business customers at no additional cost, they will now have access to Amazon Chime’s innovative, easy-to-use web-conferencing and collaboration suite, which is a perfect complement to Vonage’s robust portfolio of unified communications solutions for greater mobility, flexibility, and workplace productivity,” stated Vonage CEO Alan Masarek.

These deals follow a recent rollout of three new AWS partner programs and Level 3 offering a bundle that privately and directly connects Amazon WorkSpaces users to the cloud. The Chime deals illustrate the opportunity for channel partners that can incorporate Chime to augment VoIP services and supplement or replace other UC offerings.