In a bid to take on both Google and Microsoft, Amazon Web Services has announced Amazon WorkMail, what it calls a “secure, managed business email and calendaring service in the cloud”.
Amazon WorkMail has most features of other popular managed mails services. letting users send and receive email, manage contacts, share calendars, and book resources using their present email applications. The difference is that consumers will not need to buy or manage hardware or license “expensive and complex email server software”.
Amazon claimed its WorkMail “integrates with existing corporate directories, and has the security features enterprises need to control and protect their data. In short order, customers can quickly begin provisioning Amazon WorkMail accounts, and pay only for the mailboxes they create with simple, monthly pricing”.
Amazon said its new service delivers the simplicity and on-demand access of a managed cloud service that works with popular email clients and also has the security controls enterprises need. Incidentially, Amazon already has one of the world’s most popular cloud services.
“Amazon WorkMail eliminates the need for customers to purchase and license email servers and handle the ongoing patching, back-up, and upgrades involved in maintaining these systems. It is fully compatible with Microsoft Outlook, and customers can quickly integrate Amazon WorkMail with their existing corporate directory, choose encryption keys, select the location where they want their data to reside, and pay only for the mailboxes they create.”
Peter De Santis, Vice President, AWS Compute Services said customers have repeatedly asked them for a business email and calendaring service that is more cost-effective and simpler to manage than their on-premises solution, more secure than the cloud-based offerings available today, and that is backed by the same best-in-class infrastructure platform on which they’re reliably running so many of their current (and future) workloads.
“We built Amazon WorkMail to address these requests and to help businesses achieve agility and cost savings by letting AWS manage the non-differentiated heavy lifting involved in corporate email and calendaring.”
Amazon lists WorkMail’s USPs as reduced complexity and cost, security and privacy controls, corporate directory integration, Microsoft Active Directory compatibility, access from any device and integration with Amazon WorkDocs.
While Amazon is offering a 30-day free trial, more pricing detials are available on the site.