Amazon Takes on Microsoft, Cisco in Videoconferencing

By Jay Greene 

Amazon.com Inc.'s cloud-computing business is taking on Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. in videoconferencing, pushing deeper into in the productivity-application market to broaden its appeal to business customers.

The new service, called Chime, lets users host video meetings and share content on computer and mobile-phone screens. It is available on the web as well as apps for Apple Inc.'s iOS and Alphabet Inc.'s Android mobile operating systems.

Chime competes with Microsoft's Skype for Business, Cisco's WebEx and a host of other similar services.

Amazon's biggest rivals in cloud computing--Microsoft and Alphabet's Google Cloud--already offer a wide range of productivity applications. Such apps can drive other corporate tech-buying decisions, said Bern Elliot, an analyst with the market research firm Gartner Inc.

Chime isn't Amazon's first step into productivity apps. Two years ago, the company launched WorkMail, an email and calendaring service for businesses, and WorkDocs, a document storage and sharing service.

Both services are still in their "early days," said Ariel Kelman, vice president of world-wide marketing for Amazon Web Services. Even with that slow start, he expects Amazon to push deeper into the market for workplace-productivity apps.

Employee productivity is "an area where the tools of the future have yet to be built," Mr. Kelman said.

Amazon has a "tough row to hoe" to be successful in the so-called unified communications-as-a-service market, Gartner's Mr. Elliot said. The research firm estimates the market, which includes web-based audio and videoconferencing, voice mail and telephony, generated $12 billion in world-wide revenue last year, and will climb to $22 billion in 2020.

"This is a competitive market that's mature," Mr. Elliot said. "It's a market that has established vendors and some of them are mega-vendors."

Amazon can potentially carve a niche for itself through pricing, Mr. Elliot said. The basic version of Chime is free. Chime Plus, which includes management features such as the ability to disable accounts, costs $2.50 a user per month. Chime Pro, which costs $15 a user per month, adds support for mobile and in-room video, among other features.

Chime is built on technology Amazon acquired when it bought the San Francisco startup Biba Systems Inc. The company declined to say when it bought Biba or how much it paid.

Write to Jay Greene at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 14, 2017 00:15 ET (05:15 GMT)

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