News

AWS Partners with Slack for Enterprise Development Collaboration

• By David Ramel
• 06/05/2020

No. 1 cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) is teaming up with communication specialist Slack -- a developer favorite -- to provide integrated tools for enterprise development teams.

Slack is one of the hottest companies in the communications/collaboration space, with a special affinity among developers, with its channel-based approach -- organized spaces related to a project, topic or team -- said by many to improve on crowded email inboxes and other alternatives.

That developer affinity is bolstered by features that help dev teams:

• Write, deploy, and debug code with the help of other apps
• Track bug notifications and change requests
• Work using agile methodologies and create efficient workflows
• Create internal integrations for workspaces

With Slack's new pact with AWS -- its "preferred cloud provider" -- the communications firm said new shared initiatives make it easier for teams to manage their AWS resources in Slack. Specifically, one part of the partnership will see Slack migrate its Slack Calls voice/video calling to Amazon Chime, AWS's communications service for meeting, chatting and placing business calls.

"Amazon Chime SDK (software development kit) will soon power audio, video, and screen-sharing capabilities in native Slack Calls," the companies said in a June 4 news release. "By relying on Amazon Chime to power its real-time communication, Slack will leverage AWS's proven infrastructure to deliver high-quality and reliable user experiences while eliminating the cost and complexity of maintaining its own unified communications infrastructure."

Other parts of the pact include integration with Enterprise Key Management (EKM), AWS Chatbot and Amazon AppFlow (used to integrate apps and automate data flows).

AWS already has some integration with Slack, as last year it introduced AWS Chatbot (for DevOps, called ChatOps) with the ability to receive AWS Budgets alerts via Slack. It also enhanced its notifications functionality last year, giving users the option to have notifications sent to their Slack Channels.

Speaking of the AWS Chatbot service, Slack said in a June 4 blog post about the new partnership: "It allows DevOps teams to execute AWS operational activities, including monitoring, system management, and deployment workflows, all within Slack."

"Slack continues to rely on AWS as its preferred cloud provider and will use a range of AWS services, including storage, compute, database, security, analytics, and machine learning, to develop new collaboration features," the companies said. "Additionally, AWS has agreed to use Slack to simplify the way teams at AWS communicate and work together."