Amazon wants to take over the boardroom, silence Skype with Chime

Internet behemoth Amazon has announced a new workplace messaging and conferencing facility. Dubbed Chime, the product is billed as a “communications service that transforms online meetings with a secure, easy-to-use application that you can trust”.

According to the company, the Skype-rival works across multiple devices, much like the service its going up against.

“You can use Amazon Chime for online meetings, video conferencing, calls, chat, and to share content, both inside and outside your organization,” Amazon adds.

The company claims that a number of features makes its offering unique, including a meeting facility that calls you when a meeting begins. There’s also a Skype-like attendee roster, from which users can mute audio.

Amazon Chime will use the company’s networking backbone to rival the likes of Skype in the boardroom

Amazon claims that Chime is also encrypted, thanks to hosting the services on its own Amazon Web Services. It also stores messages and other data server-side, which the company claims aids security and the ease of remote info access. This also helps when accessing this data — as the app is available on Windows, Android, Mac OS and iOS.

Amazon Chime is free to try for 30 days, with the Basic version activated after the trial period. You’ll need to pay US$15 per user for the full version (which includes a few IT-friendly stuff like unlimited VoIP and active directory configs).

The Plus version, priced at US$2.50 per user, allows for remote screen sharing.