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Amazon has announced that it is to enter into the busy and competitive videoconferencing space with Chime.
Chime is aimed squarely at businesses and comes out of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) arm of the company. It runs on the AWS servers and promises "frustration-free meetings". Pricing ranges from a free basic plan for video calls for up to two people, to a Pro plan for $15 per user per month (which gets you the whole kit and kaboodle including video meetings for up to 100 people and personal meeting URLs). Chime is available for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android devices.
Amazon has not been one to shy away from entering competitive markets, and this move sees the company entering into a communications services space dominated by the likes of Skype for business and Google Hangouts. It also finds itself in contention with virtual meeting management service providers such as Cisco and GoToMeeting.
“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,” Gene Farrell, Vice President of enterprise applications at AWS, said in a statement.
AWS has already proved its mettle in cloud services as Chime runs on its servers, the service could potentially be a lot smoother than competitive products on the market. You can give Chime a go on a free 30 day trial if you’re interested. Have a look at Amazon’s pitch video below.
