Technology
Amazon Offers Work E-Mail Service to Compete with Google
The Amazon logo is seen on the new logistics center of the online merchant in Lauwin-Planque, northern France. (Michel Spingler/AP Photo)
(SF Gate) – Amazon.com Inc. is starting an e-mail and calendar service for professionals dubbed WorkMail, pushing deeper into a corporate technology market dominated by Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc.
WorkMail would compete with Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s Apps for Work to become a daily point of contact between Amazon and customers. It builds on the technical capabilities the Seattle company has developed through its Amazon Web Services cloud-computing division, through which Amazon also offers a file-storage service named Zocalo and databases like Amazon Aurora.
The worldwide market for cloud-based e-mail services was worth $6.3 billion in annual sales in 2014, and will increase to an estimated $16.9 billion by 2018, according to a report by the Radicati Group Inc., a market research firm.
“Customers have repeatedly asked us for a business e-mail and calendaring service,” Amazon vice president Peter De Santis said in a statement.
