In February
2017, Amazon Web Service (AWS) released Amazon Chime, its Saas Solution for
calls, video conferencing and instant messaging. Chime targets only companies
and thus competes against Skype for Business and Google Hangout. AWS had the wish
to offer a quality service, supposed to eliminate problems from online meetings.
This app highlights its easiness to use, offering a better experience to users
than the competitive apps, with a high audio and video quality, added to an
easy connexion procedure. For example, the video tag of each participant allows
to know who join the meeting late or if one of the users is responsible of
noise problems during the call.
Unlike Skype
Business, people don’t need to subscribe to join a meeting. They just need an
account when they want to create a video conference. In this way, people can
download the Amazon Chime App which is compatible with Android, iOS, Mac OS X
or Windows. Each meeting can use a personalized URL and people can join the
conference only by dialling a phone number in 70 countries. During the meeting, people have the
possibility to share the screen with other people of the conversation and to
let them control their mouse, which is totally new for a video conferencing
app. They can easily share files with a “drag-and-drop” and chat with other
people.
Prime is a
freemium offer and the free version is quite limited as only 2 people can
access the audio or video conference. The “Plus” version - $2.50 per user and
per month – adds screen sharing, management of a distant sharing terminal and a
corporate directory. The “Pro” version offers all services of Amazon Chime
(video meeting for up to 100 people and personal meeting URLs) but it is quite
expensive as it costs $15 per month per user.
Nevertheless, we
can wonder to what extent Chime is relevant or not compared with existing
offers in this sector, especially about the price-quality ratio. Nowadays,
Skype Meetings offers people the possibility of calling up to 10 people at the
same time from any device, enabling them to share screens, using collaborative
whiteboards and laser pointer… for free. The upper version, Skype Business, allows
calls up to 250 people for $2 per month, per user. Not to mention how famous
Skype has become, with its 300 million active users and 1 billion downloads on
smartphones! As
information about user’s satisfaction on Skype is unavailable, it is also hard
to measure its price-quality ratio. Following months will be crucial, since
people will compare both products for the first time.
This new release draws our attention to a
current question: are videoconferences replacing real meetings in the business
world? It seems more and more relevant. As the number of international firms is
rising – and we can even consider settling an immediate translation system into
it – it can help saving a lot of money and energy into business travels. It can
also become a real option for local firms, as it can be easier to gather
everyone off the working time for example.
However, most people seem to be reluctant
to this kind of meeting, generally accepting the following fact: a
videoconference does not worth a face to face conference.
Camille Garinet & Tanguy Villiame
References
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