Amazon has officially decided to adopt Zoom as its primary meeting application, replacing its own Chime. This strategic move was revealed through an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.
Launched in 2017, Amazon Chime served as the main meeting app for Amazon's corporate employees. Despite its capabilities to run video and audio calls, Chime had limited external use. According to the memo, Zoom will now serve as the standard meeting application for Amazon's internal meetings.
The transition to Zoom marks a significant development for the videoconferencing app maker, especially after losing most of its pandemic-driven stock price gains in recent years. Amazon cited Chime's limited external use as one reason for its deprecation. A company spokesperson stated that when Amazon decides to retire a service, it is typically because a better solution has been introduced, often provided by partners.
In addition to adopting Zoom, Amazon is also rolling out Microsoft's 365 productivity tools internally. According to the memo, Amazon has committed to investing $1 billion over five years to utilize M365. This transition means Amazon employees will gradually migrate to Microsoft's cloud applications, gaining access to services like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Microsoft Teams will be available for meetings requiring full integration with M365, while Cisco Webex will cater to meetings with customers using Cisco's products. These changes aim to enhance collaboration and productivity within the organization.
Despite the discontinuation of Chime as a meeting app, Amazon assured in a separate blog post that the change will not affect Chime’s software development kit. This SDK enables customers to build their communication applications seamlessly.
Chime is the second product shutdown Amazon announced this week. Earlier, the company revealed the discontinuation of Inspire, a TikTok-style video and photo feed.
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