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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has acquired end-to-end encrypted communication technology software vendor Wickr and is offering its services to partners and customers immediately.
Focusing on the military, government and enterprise sectors, Wickr claims to be the only collaboration service to meet the security criteria outlined by the US’ National Security Agency, providing end-to-end encryption for text chat, voice calls, video calls, file sharing and screen sharing.
It also claims to offer testable encryption, multi-factor authentication, invitation controls, minimal third party sharing and secure deletion, as well as publicly sharing its source code.
The move to snag Wickr positions the cloud giant to further compete in the unified communications arena against the likes of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google's G Suite, Cisco Webex and Slack, coming alongside its exising unified communications service Chime.
According to Wickr, its solution differs to Chime in that AWS' does not feature end-to-end encryption, does not offer minimal third party sharing and has not publicly shared its source code.
Through the acquisition, AWS will offer the New York-headquartered vendor’s services, while existing Wickr channel and business partners, as well as customers, can keep using the vendor’s services as they normally would.
“We are pleased to share that Wickr has been acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team,” a statement on Wickr’s website said. “We’re proud to have created highly trusted, secure communication solutions for messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, and more.
"From our founding ten years ago, we have grown to serve organisations across a wide range of industries, all over the world. Together with AWS, we look forward to taking our solutions to the next level for our customers and partners.”
The acquisition comes days after the cloud giant announced its expanded global strategic partnership with Salesforce.
The expansion of the partnership will allow developers to create AWS applications with the connection of Salesforce data and workflows natively, as well as streamline the process for Salesforce developers to integrate AWS data and workflows into Salesforce applications.
