Amazon launches work email and calendar service in £6.6bn revenue drive

Amazon.com Inc has accelerated its efforts to win over corporate clients by announcing an email and scheduling service that will compete with Microsoft Corp and Google Inc. The service, dubbed WorkMail, will launch in April and has been developed by the company’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS). It highlights Amazon’s efforts to convince deep-pocketed companies to shift more of their work to AWS.

Email is a Trojan Horse into the enterprise.

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian

Launching an email and scheduling service is likely the first step toward a broader suite of Amazon tools to gain corporate clients, analysts said. For example, Google’s Gmail offers many other services beyond email and calendars including file-sharing and video conferencing. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said that email is a £660m opportunity for Amazon given the popularity of AWS and Amazon’s willingness to sacrifice margins for volume. And if Amazon adds more services for companies, it could bring in £6.6bn more in extra revenue, Sebastian said.

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