Amazon To Enter Workplace Email Market With WorkMail, Takes On Microsoft, Google

Amazon is moving further into the corporate technology market with a new email and eletronic calendar service that will take on Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail. The service, to be called WorkMail, will be announced Wednesday, according to a report.

WorkMail's two main selling points are simplicity and security. Businesses can switch to WorkMail without disrupting their workers since Amazon's new service can run through Microsoft Outlook and other commonly used email interface applications.

The only thing businesses switch with WorkMail is the technology that powers their email and the data centers where the information is kept. With WorkMail, emails run through Amazon's servers, which keep emails safe and encrypted. Amazon will also let businesses select in what regions they store their emails, allowing companies to essentially choose what privacy laws their messages are subject to. European companies, for example, may want to store their messages in the United States, which has looser laws than its own continent.

“Customers are not happy with their current email solutions,” Adam Selipsky, an executive with Amazon Web Services, told the Wall Street Journal. “A lot of customers feel those solutions are expensive and complex.”

WorkMail will reportedly cost $4 a month per email inbox, which is similar to what Microsoft and Google charge for their workplace offerings. Amazon is already a player in consumer technology, offering users various services including music and video streaming, but until now, the Seattle giant has limited its corportate offerings to providing back-end computing power for companies like Netflix.