Amazon WorkSpaces Gains App Subscriptions but Still Falls Short

Amazon has taken a big step forward in its application delivery strategy, taking to the stage at the April AWS Summit in San Francisco to announce the introduction of AWS Marketplace for Desktop Apps, a dedicated storefront for Amazon’s Desktop as a Service platform, Amazon WorkSpaces, through which customers can purchase off-the-shelf applications to run on their virtual desktops. At the same time, Amazon VP Andy Jassy announced the availability of a new admin tool, WorkSpaces Application Manager, which controls admin and user access to marketplace apps. 

Up until now, the only choices available to WorkSpaces customers were either to use a GPO-based installer or to create custom Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Both approaches work, but fall well short of alternatives offered by other DaaS vendors, so this is a very welcome and much-needed update. WorkSpaces Application Manager (WAM) uses application virtualization to containerize apps and stream them down to the desktop on demand. Unfortunately, while the idea is sound, Amazon’s implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

For reasons best known to itself, Amazon has not published the list of applications outside of the desktop applications marketplace, providing only a summary of application types and a handful of featured applications. The full list of applications isn’t accessible until at least one virtual desktop has been created. So, keen to learn more, I handed over the credit card and got to work. A list of all the applications available at the time of writing is provided at the end of this article.

With a desktop created, I was able to access the full list of applications in the marketplace. Amazon promises “access to over 100 applications” spanning illustration and design, GIS and mapping, AP and billing, productivity and collaboration, project management, media and encoding, security, storage and archiving, application and web development, and business intelligence. Several applications appeared to be missing in action, as I could initially find only 82 apps visible in the catalog. After receiving assurances from Amazon that the current inventory extended to 107 applications, I looked again and found the “missing” apps, which were hidden by some amateurish UI design flaws that should never have reached production, and which left me questioning whether or not any testing had been done prior to release. Since the initial release, Amazon has continued to add new apps to the marketplace, taking the number up to 112, and I expect it to continue to add new applications in the coming weeks. While 112 apps may appear to be a substantial number, of the currently available apps, over half are freeware and a significant number are near duplicates: there are three different versions of Python and three different editions of Lulu Software’s Soda PDF editor, Microsoft Office and Project are available in both 2010 and 2013 releases and as both Professional and Standard editions, and so on. You can’t use all of the applications straight out of the box: several apps require the Java Runtime Environment, which is not part of the default AMI used to create WorkSpaces desktops. However, Amazon has gone to the trouble of tagging these apps with a brief note to this effect, and it offers several recommendations as to how to address this in the WorkSpaces support forum, if you go looking for it.

If Amazon hasn’t gone out of its way to make the list of marketplace applications easy to access, it hasn’t gone out of its way to make them easy on the wallet, either. While Amazon VP Andy Jassy announced during the Thursday morning keynote that the intent is simplifying software licensing issues by allowing customers to pay by the month, he didn’t go so far as to suggest that it would result in any savings. For example, Corel PaintShop Pro X7 is listed on AWS Marketplace at $6.50 per user per month, yet the same package can be bought outright from Amazon’s e-commerce property for just $55. If you only need a desktop and applications for a couple of months, Amazon WorkSpaces prices are attractive, but for anyone looking for a long-term commitment, falling back to conventional licenses will result in substantial savings.

Subscribing to AWS Marketplace apps is straightforward. The first step in getting apps onto the desktop is to build an application catalog. Adding AWS Marketplace apps is as simple as selecting the application and acknowledging the terms and conditions, and you’re done. With an application catalog created, the next step is to assign applications to users. It’s possible to assign applications as either required or optional, and to specify whether or not applications also update if new packages are deployed; beyond that, there’s nothing to it. Just don’t attempt to assign more than five applications at a time, unless you like reading error messages. Adding your own apps requires a little more work. As with other application virtualization/streaming solutions, the applications must go through a packaging process using the Amazon WorkSpaces Application Manager Admin Studio, which looks very much like a white-labeled version of Numecent’s Application Jukebox Studio.

The only way to access the Admin Studio is through a dedicated Amazon Machine Image, which Amazon recommends be on an m3.xlarge or better instance type connected through a separate dedicated VPC. While it is certainly understandable that a pristine image is used to capture application installs, I’m not sure that restricting the Admin Studio to a specific AMI is the right way to go. Right from the start, it deviates from the desktop admin’s preferred single image management approach to VDI. In time, drift between the Admin Studio AMI and the WorkSpaces AMI(s) could introduce unforeseen problems. By default, users don’t have permission to access WAM resources, so before launching the packaging instance, you must first create two new Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, which grant WAM permission to perform actions on your behalf. All this poking around in the guts of AWS may not present any problems for experienced admins, but it effectively closes the door to non-IT people looking to build their own Amazon WorkSpaces desktop. Once you have copied your application installer up to the cloud so it is accessible to the Admin Studio, the actual packaging process is pretty straightforward. The Admin Studio behaves just like any other application packager, capturing all files, fonts, services, and drivers, as well as changes to the registry, environment variables, and startup folders. Once information is captured, it’s possible to then go in and edit any of this information, adding, removing, or changing captured values to customize the package, before uploading the finished package into WAM. After that, it’s back to the AWS console to register the package (uploading it from the Admin Studio doesn’t do this step for you) before you can assign it to your users.

If the admin side of WAM is a little unfriendly, the end user experience is approaching hostile. WAM performs three separate functions: Application Streaming Agent, Storefront, and App Launcher. (Incidentally, WAM appears to be AWS developed, rather than a white-label version of Numecent’s Application Jukebox, which separates the installer agent from the web-based storefront.) WAM isn’t installed on any of the default desktop AIMs, so the first thing that the user has to do is install it. On startup, WAM streams down any apps that the administrator has defined as being required, and it presents the user with a list of applications that can be optionally subscribed to. The streaming process takes a couple of minutes per app on a “Value” WorkSpace with one vCPU and 2 GB memory and fully integrates the streamed app into Windows. So far so good, but then it starts to get a little confusing. Applications appear inside WAM with large, business-card sized icons complete with a friendly “Open” button that can be used to launch the app. Unfortunately, as an app launcher, WAM is a poor alternative to anything that Windows offers. The icons are too big and quickly fill the screen. It’s possible to sort them by name, vendor, and application type, but it’s not possible to manually reorder apps to put frequently used ones near the top of the list, so searching for and launching apps inevitably results in excessive scrolling. Nor is it possible to drag and drop app icons out of WAM and onto the desktop or Start menu. Actually, that’s not quite right: you can drag application icons out of WAM, but they appear on the desktop as an unusable shortcut to an HTML file. Sloppy UI design on the admin console is bad, but when it comes to user experience for end users, it’s inexcusable. Amazon could have made WAM quite painless if it had chosen to break it up into separate components, implementing the streaming agent as a service with a separate storefront app. It isn’t immediately clear why Amazon chose to add the app launcher functionality. WAM installed applications already integrate into the Start menu and Windows desktop, making it difficult to understand why anyone would choose to use it in preference to anything else. If it wasn’t for the need to allow users to choose their own apps, anyone finding themselves responsible for a WorkSpaces implementation would probably be best served by relegating WAM to the system tray and hiding its icon.

I didn’t subject WorkSpaces to any in-depth testing this time around, beyond confirming that performance was consistent with expectations for assigned resources. However, alarmingly, at one point during testing the behavior of the icons on the desktop changed, so that attempts to launch any app from its desktop shortcut opened the Icon Properties window. I was only able to resolve the problem by refreshing the virtual desktop from the admin console. I also ran into problems with the Amazon WorkSpaces Windows client. Once, after logging off the desktop, the client stopped accepting keyboard input, forcing me to cut-and-paste my credentials in to regain access. Only a reboot of my desktop PC resolved that problem. Neither problem recurred in the remainder of my testing, but given the duration of my testing, it’s not possible to determine if this is a major concern or not.

When I first reviewed Amazon WorkSpaces last year, I found it lacking when compared to other DaaS offerings, missing key features and management services. Over time, some of these shortcomings have been addressed: Amazon has recently added the ability for Mac users to use local printers and has extended the service to cover the Asia Pacific region though the Singapore data center. Amazon has also made small improvements to the administrators’ lot, allowing them to reboot or remove multiple desktops in one go, and it has provided proper installers for its Windows and OS X clients—previously, the only way to install the clients was from a web link that was emailed to the user. It has also taken the first steps toward delivering a management API, although at present it is severely limited in functionality and does not provide any support for application management. These updates and the addition of the application management service will go some way toward addressing Amazon WorkSpaces deficits, but at a time when its competitors are continuing to enhance their products, Amazon is, if anything, even further behind than it was a year ago. I’ve shared my latest feedback with Amazon, and I’m confident that it will continue to improve WorkSpaces; however, given the evident lack of attention to detail, it isn’t possible to recommend WorkSpaces in its present form. Taking into account the pace of development of competing DaaS services, unless Amazon commits significantly more resources to WorkSpaces to deliver more features and improves overall quality, it is unlikely that it will ever be able to compete against more-focused rivals.

All things considered, Amazon’s move to provide an application catalog for Windows desktop apps is more important than any shortfall that WorkSpaces may have today. Just as Amazon’s entry into the DaaS market has done more to alert customers to the opportunity than would have been possible if WorkSpaces had been launched by a startup, Amazon’s presence in the market is such that in enabling its customers to license off-the-shelf desktop apps by the month, it is waking up the software industry to the opportunity of pay-per-use desktop applications. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, the subscription services model will be imitated by every cloud desktop provider as a matter of course.

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Amazon WorkSpaces Application Catalog

AP and Billing

Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Buddi	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	HomeBank	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	KMyMoney	Free

Application and Web Development

IDM Computer Solutions, Inc.	UEStudio	$12.55/month/user
IDM Computer Solutions, Inc.	UEStudio & UltraCompare Bundle	$18.85/month/user
IDM Computer Solutions, Inc.	UltraEdit	$10.05/month/use
IDM Computer Solutions, Inc.	UltraEdit & UltraCompare Bundle	$12.55/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Premium 2012	$193.15/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Premium 2013	$193.15/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Pro 2012	$40.50/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Pro 2013	$40.50/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Ultimate 2012	$421.25/month/user
Microsoft	Visual Studio Ultimate 2013	$421.25/month/user
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	BlueGriffon	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Cygwin	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Eclipse IDE	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Git	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Github	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	jEdit	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	KompoZer	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Notepad++	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	PuTTY	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Python 2.7.8	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Python 2.7.9	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Python 3.4.2	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	R	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Strawberry Perl	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	TeXnicCenter	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Tortoise SVN	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	VIM	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	WinSCP	Free
Serif (Europe) Ltd	WebPlus X8	$14.05/month/user

Business Intelligence

GoldMine Software	GoldMine Premium Edition	$23.05/month/user
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	FloreantPOS	Free
Swiftpage	Act! Pro v17	$22.65/month/user
Swiftpage	Act! Pro v17 with Support	$30.25/month/user

CAD

IMSI Design	TurboCAD Pro 2015	$31.50/month/user
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	FreeCAD	$34.45/month/user

GIS and Mapping

Golden Software	Didger® 5	$24.50/month/user
Golden Software	Grapher™ 11	$30.80/month/user
Golden Software	MapViewer™ 8	$28.90/month/user
Golden Software	Strater® 4	$28.25/month/use
Golden Software	Surfer® 12	$53.50/month/user
Golden Software	Voxler® 3	$30.15/month/user

Illustration and Design

Corel Corporation	Corel® PaintShop® Pro X7	$6.50/month/user
Corel Corporation	CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite X7	$42.25/month/user
Hyperionics	HyperSnap	$1.50/month/user
Microsoft	Visio Pro 2013	$16.20/month/user
Microsoft	Visio Standard 2013	$8.35/month/user
Microsoft	Visio Viewer	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	GIMP	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Inkscape	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Paint.net	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Scribus	Free
Serif (Europe) Ltd	DrawPlus X6	$11.25/month/user
Serif (Europe) Ltd	PagePlus X8	$15.10/month/user
Serif (Europe) Ltd	PhotoPlus X7	$10.05/month/user

Media and Encoding

Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	aTunes	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Audacity	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Jajuk	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	KMPlayer	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	musikCube	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	VLC Media Player	Free

Productivity and Collaboration

Corel Corporation	PDF Fusion	$2.75/month/user
Corel Corporation	WordPerfect Office X7	$13.10/month/user
Foxit Corporation	Foxit PhantomPDF Business	$11.40/month/user
Foxit Corporation	Foxit PhantomPDF Standard	$8.45/month/user
Foxit Corporation	Foxit Reader	Free
Kingsoft Software	WPS Office for Windows (free)	Free
Kingsoft Software	WPS Office for Windows (professional)	$3.75/month/user
LibreOffice	LibreOffice-from-Collabora Amazon Edition	$1.25/month/user
LULU Software	Soda PDF 7 Business: The Smart and Simple Solution	$7.40/month/user
LULU Software	Soda PDF 7 Professional: The Smart and Simple Solution	$16.25/month/user
LULU Software	Soda PDF 7 Standard: The Smart and Simple Solution	$12.45/month/user
Microsoft	Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus	$15.00/month/user
Microsoft	Microsoft Office 2010 Standard	$11.00/month/user
Microsoft	Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus	$15.00/month/user
Microsoft	Microsoft Office 2013 Standard	$11.00/month/user
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	AbiWord	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Calligra	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Dia	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	FreeMind	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Miranda NG	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Pidgin	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	SeaMonkey	Free

Project Management

Microsoft	Project Pro 2010	$32.15/month/user
Microsoft	Project Pro 2013	$32.15/month/user
Microsoft	Project Standard 2010	$19.30/month/user
Microsoft	Project Standard 2013	$19.30/month/user

Security Storage Archiving

Bitdefender (HQ)	Bitdefender Security for Amazon WorkSpaces	$3.75/month/user
McAfee	McAfee Endpoint Protection for AWS WorkSpaces	$2.25/month/user
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Areca Backup	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	Firebird	Free
Zscaler	Zscaler Internet Security	$3.00/month/user

Utilities

Acro Software	CutePDF Professional	$3.10/month/user
Acro Software	CutePDF Writer	Free
Corel Corporation	WinZip	$3.75/month/user
IMSI Design	Turbo View & Convert	$5.00/month/user
Microsoft	IE 9	Free
Microsoft	IE 8	Free
Microsoft	Silverlight	Free
Mozilla Corporation	Mozilla Firefox	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	7-Zip	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	FileZilla	Free
Open Source Titles / WorkSpaces	KeePass	Free
TechSmith	TechSmith Snagit	$6.25/month/user
ThinPrint	ThinPrint Cloud Printer	$1.18/month/user
X1 Discovery Inc.	X1 Search 8	$3.15/month/user