Slack and AWS (Amazon Web Services) have just signed a multi-year agreement that will see all Amazon employees using Slack’s services and Slack using AWS’s Chime communication platforms to support it’s own voice and video conferencing app.

The new deal means Slack can move away from their current technology provider, and onto AWS’s platform. It will also mean they can integrate the AWS chatbot into their software for added system monitoring and messaging functionality. They’ll also get access to AWS’s Key Management Service for security and Amazon AppFlow for secure data transfer.

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. Strategically partnering with AWS allows both companies to scale to meet demand and deliver enterprise-grade offerings to our customers.

Stewart Butterfield - CEO and co-founder of Slack

During the current Covid-19 crisis Slack has seen an increase in usage of its collaboration app but has struggled to keep up with the pace set by Microsoft Teams.

Up until April 30th the company had managed to add around 12,000 customers to their paid subscription with around a further 90,000 organisations signing up to their free offering.

Those numbers pale to the take up of the Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform globally though which is where the new deal with AWS may have come about from.

The new partnership obviously makes it unlikely that Slack will use Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure for any upcoming development projects, relying solely on AWS instead with AWS benefiting from having a video conferencing app using it’s Chime platform as well as taking additional business away from their main competitor, the Microsoft Azure platform.