Amazon licenses Slack for workplace use as Slack adopts AWS video-calling tech

Amazon and Slack have announced a major partnership that will see both companies leveraging each others’ platforms.

For Amazon, this means that the e-commerce giant has licensed Slack so that all of its employees can use the business communication platform. Slack, meanwhile, has adopted Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) Chime video-calling technology.

The agreement will help the companies compete with Microsoft, which has seen its Teams communications service grow significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Slack, on the other hand, has had a steady but comparatively weak growth during this time.

Until now, only some Amazon employees used Slack. Now, the entirety of the company’s some-840,000 employee base will be able to leverage the popular workplace solution.

Further, Slack will now be able to take advantage of Chime — which is powered by Amazon’s robust cloud network — instead of its own video-calling system. According to Brad Armstrong, vice president of business development and corporate development at Slack, this will help make Slack video calls more reliable and even make it possible to add new features.

Some of these planned features include allowing video calling on mobile devices and the option to automatically transcribe calls and drop them into text conversations that can be read in Slack channels.

Source: Amazon, Slack