New unified communications service delivers frustration-free
meetings with exceptional video and audio quality
Brooks Brothers, Level 3, and Vonage among the early users and
partners
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:
AMZN), today announced Amazon Chime, a new unified communications
service that makes meetings easier and more efficient than ever
before. With Amazon Chime, customers can start high-quality video
and audio meetings with one-click, allowing customers to host or
join a meeting, chat, and share content and screens with a
seamless, synchronized experience across desktops, iOS, and Android
devices. To get started with Amazon Chime, visit
https://chime.aws.
In a world where meeting attendees are often not in the same
city, much less the same office building, unified communications
has become increasingly more important. Arguably the most prevalent
form of unified communications is meetings. Most meetings solutions
are disappointing. They’re clunky and hard to use, the video is
grainy and disconnects frequently, the audio quality is poor,
there’s constant background noise and it’s impossible to know who’s
causing it, they require long PINs to enter and join a call, and
have second-rate mobile features and apps. Further, most are only
good at one thing (e.g. voice calls, video conferencing, screen
sharing, or instant messaging), so users often have to toggle
between several different tools, none of which really solve their
problem.
Amazon Chime takes frustration out of meetings, delivering very
high quality video, voice, chat, and screen sharing. Amazon Chime
calls all participants when a meeting starts so joining a meeting
is as easy as clicking a button in the app, no PIN required. When
there’s noise on calls (think about how often somebody has to say
things like “could you please stop typing so close to the speaker”)
or somebody joins or drops mid-call, there’s no longer mystery who
it is as Amazon Chime shows a visual roster of all attendees. And,
any attendee has the power to put an end to background noise by
muting any noisy line. Amazon Chime offers strong mobile and
desktop apps, and keeps meetings and chats synchronized across
devices, so users can join meetings from anywhere via Android, iOS,
Mac, and Windows apps (and seamlessly switch from mobile to
desktop, or app to app whenever needed). Amazon Chime can be
integrated with existing corporate directories, and provides IT
administrators the ability to manage identities and control access
across an organization. Amazon Chime requires no upfront
investments, complicated deployment, or ongoing maintenance –
customers can simply download the application and get started using
the service in minutes. And Amazon Chime is one-third the cost of
traditional solutions.
“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,” said Gene Farrell, Vice
President, Enterprise Applications, AWS. “Amazon Chime delivers
frustration-free meetings, allowing users to be productive from
anywhere. And with no ongoing maintenance or management fees,
Amazon Chime is a great choice for companies that are looking for a
solution to meetings that their employees will love to use.”
Amazon Chime offers the following benefits:
- Like being in the same room, even
when miles apart: Amazon Chime uses noise-cancelling wideband
audio to deliver high-quality audio and crisp, clear HD video to
make it easier to have real conversations in a meeting. And with
Amazon Chime, video works great across all user devices and many
conference room video systems with no upgrades required.
- On-time meetings that can be joined
with a single-click: Dialing into meetings has never been
easier. Instead of trying to type in those hard-to-remember
multi-digit pins, Amazon Chime calls participants when it is time
for the meeting to start and lets them join with a single-click.
And, those who are running behind can tap a “running late” button
to automatically notify everyone in the meeting.
- The end of “who just joined?”:
Once in the meeting, Amazon Chime provides a visual roster that
allows users to see exactly who has joined, who is running late,
and who can’t make it. It also allows everyone to see who is
talking or where background noise is coming from – no more barking
dogs or loud typists – and anyone on the call can easily mute that
participant.
- Work from anywhere: Amazon Chime
was built for mobile use from day one. With easy-to-use apps for
Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows, Amazon Chime keeps meetings and
chats synchronized across devices, and users can join meetings from
any device and easily switch devices – even in the middle of a
meeting.
- Sharing made easy: Amazon Chime
makes it easy to collaborate. When in a meeting, anyone can share
their screen, instantly, without asking a host to “pass the ball,”
or jump to a different application. For ongoing collaboration
outside of meetings, Amazon Chime offers chat rooms that allow
people to work together in a single place, securely storing chat
history and files for ongoing reference.
Founded in 1818, Brooks Brothers is a leading retailer of
fashion wear and accessories in the United States. “Historically,
we used a number of unified communications applications inside
Brooks Brothers for meetings, calls, and chat,” said Phillip
Miller, Director of IT, Brooks Brothers. “We normally have to
proactively push adoption for new tools to employees, but after
starting a pilot of Amazon Chime, we quickly saw interest grow,
with internal adoption now reaching 90 percent of our corporate
staff without any formal rollout or training. With Amazon Chime,
our users get a single application for their communications needs
that works on all their devices, and now that it’s available we
plan to begin retiring the multiple legacy applications we’ve been
using.”
With 20 years of experience in e-commerce and consumer
analytics, Connexity provides the necessary insights for marketers
to build stronger relationships with their customers. “With teams
located all over the world, staying connected is a challenge,” said
Chris Hemphill, VP of IT, Connexity. “We needed a single
communications solution for one on one meetings, brainstorming
sessions, and our cross-company daily stand ups with our
engineering teams. With Amazon Chime, our employees can do all this
from a single app on any of their devices. The video capabilities
in Amazon Chime, integrated with our conference room video system,
have made our daily stand up meetings more productive. Amazon Chime
helps to keep our geographically dispersed teams connected, and is
integral to our communications strategy.”
Headquartered in Fremont, California, Soraa uses a patented
technology to produce highly efficient LED lamps and light engines.
“Soraa is a highly collaborative company, and we rely on technology
to help us work together,” said Todd Antes, Senior VP of Marketing,
Soraa. “We needed to replace our traditional online meetings
solution, which was limited and expensive, and difficult to use. We
chose Amazon Chime, which we use for online meetings, video
conferencing, and screen sharing. Amazon Chime has transformed our
online meetings, our employees can be productive from wherever they
are, and the application works seamlessly across their devices.
Amazon Chime has allowed us to save as much as 65% over our
previous solution, and is now the standard at Soraa.”
Partner Support
Amazon Chime will soon be available through APN partners Level 3
and Vonage. With availability scheduled for the second quarter of
2017, Level 3 will add Amazon Chime to its suite of unified
communications and collaboration solutions, providing enterprises
with another powerful solution to help simplify and enhance
communications. Also scheduled to be available in the second
quarter of 2017, Vonage will provide Amazon Chime Pro Edition to
its business customers at no additional cost, delivering a richer
conferencing, video, and collaboration experience integrated with
Vonage’s full range of unified communications solutions that are
backed by the quality, strength, and reliability of the Vonage
network.
Level 3 Communications, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company that
provides local, national, and global communications provider that
delivers communications services to enterprise, government and
carrier customers. “Enterprises rely on the cloud to stay nimble
and competitive in the digital economy. They need communication and
collaboration tools, like Amazon Chime, that can break down
organizational silos, and evolve with the business,” said Anthony
Christie, Chief Marketing Officer, Level 3. “With Amazon Chime,
delivered by Level 3, our customers have a clear advantage. They’ll
have access to an agile collaboration platform, powered by AWS,
with the reliability and security of Level 3’s global network.
Level 3’s consultative end-to-end support model is designed to
simplify the move to the cloud.”
Vonage is a leading provider of cloud communications services
for businesses. “Vonage is excited to be a launch partner for AWS
to bring Amazon Chime to our business customers,” said Alan
Masarek, Chief Executive Officer, Vonage. “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.”
Amazon Chime is now available in three versions. Amazon Chime
Basic Edition is free and lets users attend meetings, call another
person using voice or video, and use Amazon Chime’s messaging and
chat capabilities. Amazon Chime Plus Edition adds user management,
such as the ability to manage an entire e-mail domain, disable
accounts, or configure Active Directory, as well as 1GB per user of
message retention – all for $2.50 per user, per month. Amazon Chime
Pro Edition adds the ability to host meetings with screen sharing
and video for up to 100 users and also includes support for mobile,
laptop, and in-room video along with unlimited VoIP support – all
for $15 per user, per month.
About Amazon Web Services
For 10 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over
90 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases,
analytics, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise
applications from 42 Availability Zones (AZs) across 16 geographic
regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany,
India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the UK. AWS services
are trusted by millions of active customers around the world
monthly -- including the fastest growing startups, largest
enterprises, and leading government agencies -- to power their
infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. To learn
more about AWS, visit https://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather
than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to
operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews,
1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment
by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets,
Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and
services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit
www.amazon.com/about.
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