Amazon makes Zoom the ‘standard’ app for internal meetings and starts using Microsoft 365 tools, internal memo shows

• Amazon is adopting Zoom as its official meeting app, replacing its own Chime.
• Chime, launched in 2017, was Amazon’s main meeting app and had limited external use.
• Amazon has also started rolling out Microsoft’s 365 tools.

Amazon is making Zoom its official meeting application across the company, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.

Zoom replaces Chime, Amazon’s homegrown meeting application that can run video and audio calls, the memo said. Chime, which launched in 2017, has been the de facto official meeting app for Amazon’s corporate employees.

“Zoom is replacing Amazon Chime as the standard meeting application for Amazon internal meetings,” the memo said.

Amazon’s companywide use of Zoom, which hasn’t been previously reported, is a major win for the videoconferencing app maker, which lost most of the pandemic-driven stock price gains in recent years.

Amazon will deprecate the Chime application, partly because of its “limited” external use, the company’s spokesperson said in an email to BI.

“When we decide to retire a service or feature, it is typically because we’ve introduced something better or our partners offer a solution that is a good fit for our customers as well as our own employees. In Chime’s case, its use outside of Amazon was limited, and our partners offer great collaboration solutions, so we will lean into those,” the spokesperson said.

Zoom’s spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Amazon has also started rolling out Microsoft’s 365 productivity tools internally, the memo said. Amazon has committed to spend $1 billion over 5 years to use M365, BI previously reported.

Amazon employees will migrate to Microsoft’s cloud applications on a “rolling basis,” the memo said, and they will gain access to services like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The internal memo added that Microsoft Teams will be available for meetings where “full integration with M365 is needed,” while Cisco Webex will work for meetings with customers who use Cisco’s product.

In a separate blog post, Amazon wrote that Wednesday’s change will not impact Chime’s software development kit, which lets customers build their communication applications.

Chime is the second product shutdown Amazon announced this week. On Tuesday, the company said it’s scrapping Inspire, a TikTok-style video and photo feed.

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