Amazon.com Inc. started out delivering books to your doorstep.
Now it also wants to deliver email to your office inbox. The company on
Wednesday announced an email and electronic calendar service called WorkMail
that is aimed at grabbing a slice of the corporate-email market largely
controlled by Microsoft Corp. and to a lesser
extent Google Inc.
The new email service is the latest chapter in Amazon’s
transformation from e-commerce powerhouse into major seller of corporate
technology, until this point largely acting behind the scenes as computing
muscle for Netflix videos and Unilever websites. Amazon’s
move also spotlights how technology giants including Facebook Inc.,
Google and Microsoft increasingly view the workplace as a central battleground
in the wars for users and dollars.
One of the original digital workplace tools, email may seem
musty, but it remains a must-have entry point for tech companies seeking sales
to big organizations. Joining Google and Microsoft, International Business
Machines Corp. last fall launched a new email service for workers. Startups
such as Dropbox Inc. also offer email applications for businesses. Email
services could bring Amazon $1 billion in revenue annually, said Colin
Sebastian, a Baird Equity Research analyst, based on his estimate of sales for
Google’s business software.
WorkMail lets corporate workers keep using Microsoft Outlook
or other familiar email applications; Amazon is replacing the unseen
technology, mostly from Microsoft, that powers corporate email in data centers.
That may get companies over a big obstacle when switching employee email
technology: Some workers have a tough time adapting to an unfamiliar email user
interface.
Amazon said it would offer WorkMail to companies at a
monthly cost of $4 per inbox, a price range similar to that offered by Google
Apps for Work and Microsoft’s Office 365 service. The Google and Microsoft
services also include capabilities other than email.
Amazon has a track record of breaking into corporate
technology areas where potential customers have established operations and
relationships with other vendors. For nearly a decade, it has let companies pay
by the hour to run corporate websites, apps or other digital services on its
computer networks.
That business, called Amazon Web Services, has become an
enormously influential force in technology, and thousands of companies have
used the service instead of running their own computer servers, digital data
storage or number-crunching databases. AWS may bring in nearly $6 billion in
revenue this year, up from $4.3 billion in 2014, according to Piper Jaffray
analyst Gene Munster. Amazon doesn’t disclose financial results for AWS.
The long-term prospects for AWS are a primary reason some
investors continue to hold Amazon stock as its traditional retail business
struggles to be profitable. AWS has been rolling out competitive services, such
as virtual desktop software and a data storage service initially called Zocalo,
in an effort to wrest market share among larger customers from other
corporate-technology vendors. While AWS cites some large businesses among
clients moving most of their data center operations to its servers, the AWS
division has been beefing up its sales team to draw in brand-name customers.
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