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Amazon.com started delivering books to customer’s doorsteps. Now it wants to deliver emails to the inbox at your office.
On Wednesday the company announced an electronic calendar and email service known as WorkMail that’s goal is to grab part of the market of corporate email that is controlled largely by Microsoft and to a bit of a lesser extent by Google.
The new service for email is the most recent chapter of the transformation of Amazon from a powerhouse in e-commerce to a major seller of technology for businesses, until this point for the most part behind the scenes computing powers for the videos of Netflix and websites for Unilever.
Amazon’s move spotlights as well how tech giants including Facebook, Microsoft and Google are increasingly viewing the workplace as a main battleground in the war to win users as well as dollars.
While the field is crowded when it comes to email, Amazon is sure it can offer improvements as well as make companies happier. An executive at Amazon Web Services said customers are unhappy with the current solution they have for email. He added that many customers feel the solutions are complex and expensive.
Amazon’s pitch is largely around a pair of points: Security and simplicity of use.
WorkMail by Amazon lets the corporate worker keep using Outlook by Microsoft or another familiar application for email. Amazon will replace unseen technology the majority from Microsoft that powers the email through different data centers.
That might get the companies over a big complaint of switching employee technology for email. For example, some workers find it difficult to use email services that are unfamiliar such as Gmail.
WorkMail, as far as security is concerned, emails through the Amazon network of computers and its messages are all encrypted or scrambled, so the prying eyes would not make sense of any mail that was intercepted.
Amazon says the cost to companies would be $4 per month for each email inbox.
