Amazon Intros Marketplace & Manager for Desktop Apps

SEATTLE -- Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, a new category on the AWS Marketplace that makes it easy to search for and buy desktop applications for Amazon WorkSpaces. Starting today, Amazon WorkSpaces’s virtual desktop customers can access the AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, choose from a broad selection of more than 100 applications in eleven categories, and pay by the month for the applications they use. To simplify deployment of these desktop applications, AWS also announced Amazon WorkSpaces Application Manager (Amazon WAM), a new service that packages and delivers applications to Amazon WorkSpaces so that they that run as if they are natively installed, but are centrally controlled by IT administrators for simplified maintenance and auditability.

Launched in 2014, Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed desktop computing service in the cloud that gives end-users access to the documents, applications, and resources they need from the device of their choice. Until now, Amazon WorkSpaces customers did not have an easy way to search for and buy applications for their Amazon WorkSpaces. Additionally, customers have only been able to buy desktop software on an annual or perpetual license basis. With AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, these customers can now easily find and purchase monthly subscriptions to popular desktop applications in categories such as Security, Productivity and Collaboration, Business Intelligence, and Illustration and Design – all from within the Amazon WorkSpaces console. Customers only pay for the software they use. There are no additional contracts or invoices, and customers receive all software charges in their monthly AWS bill.

Today, many companies deploy a mix of upwards of 200 software titles to their desktops. This requires them to invest in infrastructure to manage their applications and track usage, which adds cost and complexity. Further, it is difficult to manage upgrades and retirement of applications when they are no longer needed. Amazon WAM makes it easy to manage and deploy these applications on-demand and at scale. With Amazon WAM, administrators can build and curate a selection of desktop applications, and then control which users have access to them. Users can then select and install only the applications they need, and administrators can track usage in real-time so they only pay for what their employees use. In addition to selecting applications from the AWS Marketplace, businesses can upload their own line of business applications and control employee access to them.

“With just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, Amazon WorkSpaces customers are able to provision a high-quality, cloud-based desktop experience for their end users at half the cost of other virtual desktop infrastructure solutions,” said Gene Farrell, General Manager of AWS Enterprise Applications. “By introducing the AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps and Amazon WAM, AWS is adding even more value to the Amazon WorkSpaces experience by helping organizations reduce the complexity of selecting, provisioning, and deploying applications. With pay-as-you-go monthly pricing and end-user self-provisioning of applications, customers will lower the costs associated with provisioning and maintaining applications for their workforce.”

Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN)