Amazon, Slack Deepen AWS Partnership

Amazon and Slack are announcing a new partnership this week. Slack is extending its partnership with Amazon Web Services after the company had already used AWS to power its platform since its 2014 launch.

The new partnership will make Slack available to all of Amazon’s employees. Teams inside Amazon have already used Slack in the past, but this new deal will make the service available to all of Amazon’s employees if they want to use it.

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But the bigger part of the deal is to do with Slack’s audio and video calls. Going forward, the company will now be using Chime, an AWS service that provides all the power and tech needed for video and audio calls. Slack will be using the Amazon Chime SDK to power Slack Calls as part of the partnership.

CNBC reports that Slack will be paying AWS at least $425 million over a five-year period (ending April 2025), up from the company’s previous commitment of $250 million ending in July 2023. Slack uses a wide range of AWS services, including storage, compute, database, security, analytics, and machine learning,

Although Amazon Chime can be used as a regular video calling app, Amazon admitted that it has not invested on the interface when compared to competitors like Microsoft Teams and Slack. “We have a client UI. It’s nice, but it’s not Slack. They’re way better. It’s a much richer experience. You can do a lot more,” said Matt Garman, AWS’ vice president for sales and marketing,

The new partnership will see Amazon and Slack integrating other AWS features into Slack. The companies announced that the AWS Chatbot will be getting integrated into Slack, allowing developers to manage their AWS services and resources right from Slack.

Slack announced the new partnership last evening after reporting its earnings for FYQ1 2021. While Slack did gain a lot of new paid customers due to COVID-19, the growth was consistent with its growth rates in the past, disappointing Wall Street.