At a company famous for turning doors into desks, it only made sense for Amazon’s cloud division to find its first desktop productivity device in one of its consumer division’s existing streaming media products.
Amazon WorkSpaces, the company’s virtual desktop service, just unveiled its first device for end users, a $195 product created by directly repurposing the hardware design for Amazon’s Fire TV Cube.
Amazon Web Services executives say they decided to take the approach after hearing from enterprise customers that they wanted a low-priced device.
“We said, ‘Hey, we would love to not have to manufacture a new device,’ ” explained Muneer Mirza, AWS general manager of End User Computing, who oversees Amazon Workspaces and other services. “We wanted to take all the savings that we could get from manufacturing and turn that into lower prices for customers overall.”
It’s called the Amazon WorkSpaces Thin Client, using the industry lingo for a basic type of hardware that relies on cloud-based storage and processing rather than a beefy CPU and hard drive on a traditional computer.
Discussing the new device on an Amazon Chime video call this week, Mirza demonstrated the capabilities by using a WorkSpaces Thin Client to join and participate in the call, with no discernable difference from a traditional computer.
Muneer said feedback from beta testers has been “overwhelmingly positive,” citing some customers who say it has taken their users less than five minutes to get the device up and running.
“That is exactly what we’re going for,” he said.
Amazon WorkSpaces, which originally launched 10 years ago, is a service that allows for the provisioning of virtual, cloud-based desktops, including Microsoft Windows, Amazon Linux, or Ubuntu Linux environments. Customers can choose to pay either fixed monthly subscription fees or usage-based costs based on hourly metering.
In launching the new thin client, Amazon will be competing against some of its existing partners, thin client hardware vendors such Dell, HP, and IGEL that offer devices compatible with Amazon WorkSpaces.
To run the WorkSpaces Thin Client device, the Amazon WorkSpaces team created a customized version of Fire OS, the operating system used on Amazon Fire TV devices, along with firmware, software, and other features focused on security and manageability for corporate use-cases, including remote IT management.
But when it came to the hardware, Amazon stuck with the Fire TV Cube design so faithfully that the WorkSpaces Thin Client includes an HDMI input port and infrared receiver that serve no purpose. The device does use the HDMI output and USB ports from the Fire TV Cube to connect peripherals such as monitors, keyboard, and mouse.
In terms of distributing the devices, the WorkSpaces team is leveraging another Amazon specialty. The thin clients can be fulfilled in different ways through Amazon Business, either by shipping individual units directly to each end user, as designated by the customer, or by shipping devices in bulk to the customer to distribute themselves.
On the security front, the WorkSpaces Thin Client stores no local data, and IT administrators can closely monitor and control the devices remotely.
AWS is marketing the WorkSpaces Thin Client to industries like healthcare, financial services, and contact centers. Other potential use cases include students in computer labs, and work-from-home employees.
Amazon is announcing the device in advance of its AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas this week.
