In an age when Slack was busy upending the way video was incorporated into everyday business workflows, Chime arrived as a Skype-like standalone video experience - and that’s still what it is. The Winner: Microsoft Teams As it currently stands, Teams is a clear winner over Chime. Its features are consistently deeper and the workplace.

1. Slack Chime Plugin
2. Slack Chime
3. Slack Chime Integration

• With Slack and Amazon Chime, users have optimal flexibility, with the ability to communicate via video, voice or digital. Get up and running fast. There’s no need to set up a separate profile in Amazon Chime—as soon as the app is installed, anyone in a Slack workspace can start using Amazon Chime to place a video call or host a meeting.
• For more details see the Knowledge Center article with this video: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/sns-lambda-webhooks-chime-slack-tea.
• Amazon's Chime is lightweight and has easy integrations with Slack. Cloud Trail has good call reports, doesn't take time to load compared to other products that I have tried. Its APIs exposed by Amazon are really helpful to customize. The shift from one user to another for screen sharing, remote control work with no hindrances.
• The Amazon Chime Meetings App for Slack helps break down the barrier between team communication and work. This new integration is just another example of how Slack seamlessly connects to the tools your teams use every day, delivering on our mission to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive.

Slack Chime Plugin

Slack is partnering with Amazon Web Services to integrate AWS management functions into Slack channels, among other integrations between the two.

The integrations primarily involve Slack incorporating AWS functionality and products into its system in several ways that will benefit organizations that use both Slack and AWS, the companies said.

Slack also said it 'will use a range of AWS services, including storage, compute, database, security, analytics, and machine learning, to develop new collaboration features,' while AWS' part in the deal seems limited to adopting Slack as its internal collaboration platform.

Behind-the-scenes integrations are just one element of the Slack/AWS partnership, and many elements of the new deal between the two companies will affect Slack and AWS users as well.

SEE: 10 ways to prevent developer burnout (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

What Slack and AWS users can expect

There are four major things that Slack announced as part of its new integration partnership with AWS, and each will affect enterprise Slack customers who use AWS.

The most invisible change coming as part of the partnership is Slack's migration of the infrastructure for its Slack Calls video calling and conferencing service to Amazon Chime. Slack said this migration will allow it to eliminate the overhead of maintaining its own video conferencing infrastructure and 'leverage AWS's proven infrastructure to deliver high-quality and reliable user experiences.'

Slack said the Amazon Chime migration won't have a direct effect on users, at least in the short term. Over time '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.'

One thing that Slack users will definitely see is the addition of AWS Chatbot to Slack. While AWS Chatbot already exists and is actively being used, Slack said that the plan is to continue integrating the AWS Chatbot service to incorporate all of AWS' services 'to give developers the ability to collaborate with their teams to manage all of their cloud-based services without leaving Slack.'

The Slack AWS Chatbot is able to send alerts in Slack channels when errors occur, lets developers run AWS command line interface commands, and can provide reports and other diagnostic data, all inside of Slack.

Amazon AppFlow is also getting a Slack integration as part of the partnership. AppFlow in Slack will allow users to transfer data between Slack and AWS services like S3 and Redshift without having to manually download and upload data, and in coming months will support bidirectional data transfer inside of Slack channels.

Finally, Slack's Enterprise Key Management (EKM), which has operated on AWS Key Management Service since 2019, is getting additional features that will allow Slack users to automate routine key security processes through integration with Slack's workflow builder.

Slack said its goal in the partnership is to create an alliance that allows enterprises to unlock their capabilities to innovate. 'By integrating AWS services with Slack's channel-based messaging platform, we're helping teams easily and seamlessly manage their cloud infrastructure projects and launch cloud-based services without ever leaving Slack,' said Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield.

'Together, AWS and Slack are giving developer teams the ability to collaborate and innovate faster on the front end with applications, while giving them the ability to efficiently manage their backend cloud infrastructure,' said AWS CEO Andy Jassy.

Competition in the realm of collaboration platforms has driven a new partnership between Slack and Amazon. As Microsoft Teams has become a stronger competitor, Slack has been laying down a foundation for this multiyear agreement with Amazon. Since late 2019, Slack has integrated Amazon Chime into its apps. With the launch of the Amazon Chime Meeting App, teams can hold voice and video meetings on Chime from their Slack workspace.

As the pandemic has geared us towards remote work, the number of virtual meetings and use of collaboration platforms has surged. Therefore, despite the spike in their user’s rate, collaboration platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack continue to compete fiercely. However, Amazon and Slack have joined forces to beat Microsoft Teams. This partnership is about who will drive “the future of enterprise workplace.”

An Overview of the AWS-Slack partnership

Slack is partnering with Amazon in a multiyear agreement that means all Amazon employees will be able to start using Slack. As part of the deal, Slack will migrate its voice and video calling features over to Amazon’s Chime platform alongside a broader adoption of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Amazon will roll out Slack to all of its 840,000 employees is a big part of the deal. Up until the announcement, Slack’s most prominent customer has been IBM, which is rolled out Slack to its 350,000 employees.

While Slack has long used AWS to power parts of its chat app, it’s now committing to using Amazon’s cloud services as its preferred partner for storage, compute, database, security, analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It also includes future collaboration features, such as virtual reality, and augmented reality (VR and AR), that are essential to enhancing team collaboration experience.

As a result, this deal puts tremendous pressure on Cisco to stay as a relevant player in the continually changing future of the enterprise workplace.

Amazon Chime

Slack Chime

The move to Amazon Chime for Slack voice and video calls is also a significant part of the deal. Slack users have always used the Slack Calls for their video conferencing needs. Slack Calls was one weakness of Slack when compared with Microsoft Teams’ call features because users can only hold a meeting with a maximum of 15 participants at a time.

Slack Chime Integration

The switch to Amazon Chime will also enable users to enjoy the benefits derivable from AWS resources like security through end-to-end encryption, guest access via meeting link, screen sharing, and conference dial-ins. Also, Amazon Chime Pro allows up to 100 participants in a meeting. With time, Slack users will also be able to make audio and video calls, hold meetings and share their screen through AWS Chime. Slack mobile video and text transcription service also will be available.

Enterprise Key Management

The security of data is at the heart of many organizations’ policies today. Through Slack’s Enterprise Key Management (EKM) stored in Amazon key management service, users can encrypt and decrypt their messages and files with a Customer Master Key they build on Amazon Key Management. Even before the recent Slack-AWS partnership, Slack customers had integrated the AWS EKM into their services. At the same time, companies can revoke key access at the organization, workspace, channel, time-frame, and file-level to reduce the level of security threat to their organization.

Data Residency

Slack customers can now choose which country or region to store their data. This is especially beneficial to companies with teams spread around the globe.

App Integration & AWS Services

Slack and Amazon also are promising better product integration and interoperability for features like AWS Chatbot, a service that pushes out Slack channel alerts for AWS instances. In the coming months, Slack and AWS will improve its Amazon AppFlow integration to support the bidirectional transfer of data between AWS services and Slack channels. Also, Slack customers can move data between Slack channels and AWS services like Amazon’s storage and Amazon Redshift.

The deal also includes other AWS services to attract developers. These include AWS services for computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT). All these are drivers of software development trends that determine the future of the enterprise workplace. Other services such as hybrid, virtual, and augmented reality (VR and AR), media and application development, deployment, and management will further enhance team collaboration experience.

Conclusion

“The future of enterprise software will be driven by the combination of cloud services and workstream collaboration tools,” according to a statement by Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. “Strategically partnering with AWS allows both companies to scale to meet demand and deliver enterprise-grade offerings to our customers.”

In our opinion, this will benefit both Amazon and Slack. Amazon gets a vital partner for AWS and its Chime platform, and Slack gets the reliability and security of AWS with a better voice and video calling service underpinning its service. It also raises the competitive stakes for other team collaboration vendors such as Cisco and Zoom.

NextPlane has been an AWS partner since its early days, and we run our entire service from AWS. NextPlane enables Slack users to connect with their colleagues that are on different platforms, inside or outside of their enterprise. Users can send messages with rich text, GIF, and emoji reaction, share presence status, invite their colleagues to join their channels, share files, and more.

NextPlane connects teams across different collaboration and messaging platforms, from legacy unified communications solutions like Cisco Jabber, Skype for Business and others, to team collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, WebEx Teams, and others.