WorkMail can be seen as an extension of a couple of recent AWS products that have had much more of an “end user” feel than its usual cloud computing solutions. Amazon WorkSpaces, a Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution and Amazon Zocalo, AWS’ file sharing and synchronization product aimed squarely at competing with Box or Dropbox, are both much more mass market than other AWS products.
WorkMail takes these and extends them further. I spent time talking with Thomas Döhler, General Manager of the Amazon WorkMail team, about the rationale for the product and what it does.
As Döhler explained, we have reached the point where email is now a part of the business process – it is not just a simple communication tool but now an part of general business processes. It is also the receptacle where much critical business information is stored and controlled. As such it is intrinsically tied into files and data.
Thus the introduction of Amazon WorkMail so soon after that of Zocalo makes sense. Amazon WorkMail is integrated with Zocalo, meaning that Zocalo-located files can be sent within an email workflow. AWS is pushing Amazon WorkMail as a secure solution. Leveraging the company’s Key Management Service (KMS), WorkMail data can be encrypted with customer-managed keys. In the event that customer-supplied keys are not being used, WorkMail data is encrypted by KMS with an AWS-supplied key.
AWS is also delivering on organizations’ demands for specificity around the location of their data – users can specify where their Amazon WorkMail data will be stored – both for lower latency and regional compliance reasons. At this stage an organization can only chose one location, rather than splitting users’ WorkMail data dependent on location, but that additional feature is likely to be added over time.
Amazon WorkMail seems to be an exchange replacement rather than a front-end email product. While there is a web client that users can take advantage of, AWS is pushing the integrations it has with existing mail and calendar tools – Microsoft MSFT -3.46% Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 on Windows, Microsoft Outlook 2011 on Mac OS X and mobile devices are all supported.
AWS is providing a migration tool for users who currently utilize on-premises exchange. Amazon WorkMail is also obviously targeted at enterprise users – it features corporate functionality like shared calendars and mailboxes, a global address book and resource booking. As mentioned earlier it comes with full encryption and in terms of IT control it supports mobile device management including remote wipe.
Alongside this it covers administration using AWS Management Console and has integration with cloud-based AD or on-premises directory. In terms of pricing, Amazon WorkMail costs $4 per user per month for a 50GB mailbox. Bundled with Zocalo it is priced at $6 per user per month for 50GB of mail and 200GB of Zocalo file storage. The product is slated to launch in Q2 of 2015.
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