Amazon launches video-conferencing for cloud customers

Washington - US online giant Amazon on Tuesday announced the launch of a "unified communications service" which offers video and audio conferencing through its cloud computing service.

The new service called Amazon Chime from Amazon Web Services - which provides the online computing power for thousands of businesses - enables customers to have conversations and video conferences whether they are using desktop computers, Apple iPhones or Android devices.

"Most meeting applications or services are hard to use, deliver bad audio and video, require constant switching between multiple tools to do everything they want, and are way too expensive," said Amazon vice president Gene Farrell.