Now e-mail through Amazon

Sans Francisco: Amazon plans to launch its own email and scheduling services, to complete with Google Inc and Microsoft Corp. The official announcement came on Wednesday to win over corporate clients.

Though Amazon has been a leader in the cloud computing market – with Google and IBM being the major players – Microsoft is also making efforts to catch up in the ranking.

The “WorkMail” service will be launched in the second quarter and developed by the company’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS). The main efforts would be to convince the big players to shift their work force to AWS.

“Even though there are these strong competitors, Amazon thinks there is still a market out there,” said T J Keitt, an analyst with Forrester Research.

“They can make a play based on their data center capability and security, but whether that adds up to a highly utilized offering is to be determined. It could be an uphill march.”

The first step towards a broader suite of the Amazon tool, to win over corporate clients, would be launching an email and scheduling services, said analysts.

Also in order to mark its presence Amazon would have to introduce unique facilities, for example: Google’s Gmail offers many other services beyond email and calendars including file-sharing and video conferencing. 

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said, “Email is a $1 billion opportunity for Amazon given the popularity of AWS and Amazon’s willingness to sacrifice margins for volume.” 
If Amazon adds more services for companies, it could bring in about $10 billion more in extra revenue, he added.