Amazon this week took its enterprise-aimed email and calendaring service called WorkMail out of preview mode. The product, which first debuted a year ago, is based on Amazon Web Services and is meant to sub in for legacy solutions, like Microsoft Exchange.
However, instead of competing with client software like Microsoft Outlook, WorkMail integrates with it, as it does with Apple Mail and other email clients that use the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol including iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10.
There’s also a web application for WorkMail available, the company says.
The product fits alongside other solutions designed for the corporate crowd, like WorkDocs (previously Zocalo), an enterprise storage and sharing service; and Amazon WorkSpaces, a managed desktop computing service that lets IT provision cloud-based desktops for end users. And like the others, WorkMail is about leveraging the power of Amazon Web Services to more directly serve the needs of a business’s end users, rather than being just a back-end solution.
WorkMail offers enterprise IT an email product that includes security features like encryption, messaging scanning for spam and viruses, and regional data control – meaning customers choose where mailboxes are stored. That’s something that may appeal to European customers in the post-Snowden era.
Amazon also lists a host of other features that rolled out during its preview period, including integration with KMS (AWS Key Management Service); compliance with ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certifications; resource creation (e.g. booking meeting rooms and equipment); a migration tool to move from Exchange to WorkMail; and more.
The company additionally touts an easier setup process as the product becomes generally available. In conjunction with Simple AD, setup is generally 10 minutes, says Amazon. And it works on clients that run on OS X, including Apple Mail and Outlook.
However, there are a number of features that Amazon is still working on, like support for a single Global Address Book, the ability to access free/busy information across both environments, and an email journaling feature.
With the public release, Amazon WorkMail continues to be priced competitively at $4 per user per month, which includes 50 GB of mailbox storage. Customers can also pay $2 more per user to tack on Amazon WorkDocs as well, which offers 200 GB of cloud storage per user.
WorkMail is generally available in three AWS regions: U.S. East (Northern Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland).