

So building on Chime’s SDK provides a low-risk method of improving its offering to SMBs. While Slack has existing video comms capabilities, such as screen-sharing technology from its acquisition of Screenhero, these are pretty basic, said Angela Ashenden, a principal analyst at CCS Insight. “For AWS, the partnership validates its platform-based approach for Slack, it expands even more its capabilities for scaling and equally important, to provide enterprise-grade security features,” he said.

The deal has clear advantages for both vendors, said Raul Castanon, senior analyst at 451 Research / S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Long term, the move will allow us to add new features, such as mobile video, so users can continue to rely on Slack for secure enterprise communication.” “In the near term, there won’t be any visual changes to the end-user experience,” Slack said in a blog post.

By migrating Calls to AWS, Slack will remove the need to run its own unified communications infrastructure.
