Amazon Acquires Encrypted Communication Platform Wickr

SUMMARY

Wickr claims to be the only “collaboration service” that meets security criteria set out by the US National Security Agency

The need for this type of secure communications is accelerating with the move to hybrid work environments, due to the Covid-19 pandemic

In recent times, especially over the past year, Indian conglomerates like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries have ventured into enterprise communication services

Amazon’s cloud services arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) is getting into the encrypted video conferencing and messaging business with the acquisition of secure communications service Wickr.

Wickr is a messaging app that provides encrypted messaging services to government, military groups and enterprises. It claims to be the only “collaboration service” that meets security criteria set out by the US National Security Agency. AWS is offering Wickr services effective immediately. It offers solutions across messaging, voice and video calling, file sharing, and collaboration although it is best known for its messaging solutions.

“With Wickr, customers and partners benefit from advanced security features not available with traditional communications services – across messaging, voice and video calling, file sharing, and collaboration. This gives security conscious enterprises and government agencies the ability to implement important governance and security controls to help them meet their compliance requirement,” said AWS in a statement.

The need for this type of secure communications is accelerating with the move to hybrid work environments, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In recent times, especially over the past year, Indian conglomerates like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries have ventured into enterprise communication services with offerings like Blue Jeans and JioMeet to cater to the demand for business communication across enterprises, SMEs and startups in India. Wickr also competes with products like Microsoft Teams, Slack and Zoom.

Enterprises and government agencies have a growing desire to protect their communications across many remote locations. Wickr’s secure communications solutions help enterprises and government organizations adapt to this change in their workforces and is a welcome addition to the growing set of collaboration and productivity services that AWS offers customers and partners, said AWS.

The AWS division currently offers communications service Chime, which enables organisations to meet, chat, and place business calls and has reportedly received little traction.

AWS competes with Microsoft Azure for the enterprise cloud market leadership which includes players like Google Cloud, Salesforce and Oracle among many others. Globally, AWS was the leading cloud service provider with 32% market share in Q1 2021 quarter in the cloud infrastructure market that spent $41.8 Bn. In India AWS has a strategic partnership With Bharti Airtel to deliver enterprise cloud services while Microsoft Azure has a partnership With Reliance Jio.