Empowering your workforce with Amazon WorkSpaces services and Microsoft 365

February 19, 2024: This blog post was updated with a link to Microsoft Product Terms, and to reflect the addition of G3/G5 licenses.

Tens of thousands of customers use Amazon WorkSpaces services as their end-user computing service to provide secure, scalable, and cost-effective virtual desktops with all the tools required for users to do their jobs. Customers use all sorts of applications on their WorkSpaces virtual desktops, from single-purpose web apps to guide warehouse workers to complex rendering workloads based on GPUs in media and entertainment and everything in between. Many customers tell us they need solutions that include a simple and cost-effective mechanism for delivering productivity applications like Microsoft 365 to hybrid and remote users, while improving security posture for corporate data and intellectual property.

We’re excited that, beginning August 1, 2023, AWS End User Computing customers can use Microsoft 365 licenses through a “bring your own license” (BYOL) model on our Amazon WorkSpaces services. Ideal for knowledge workers, WorkSpaces virtual desktops are available in a variety of instance configurations, with support for Microsoft Windows, Amazon Linux 2, and Ubuntu Desktop operating systems. These services run in the highly secure and reliable AWS Cloud—offering autoscaling and pay-as-you-go pricing to ensure you only pay for what you use, while allowing users to securely access their virtual desktops and applications from any place, at any time, and from any supported device. Microsoft 365 adds to the power of the solution with popular office productivity applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Outlook, and others. Included apps vary by Microsoft 365 license plan. Microsoft allows E3/E5, A3/A5, G3/G5, and Business Premium licenses to run on WorkSpaces services. Customers can also bring licenses for Microsoft Project and Microsoft Visio to WorkSpaces services under the new licensing terms. See Microsoft Product Terms for additional information.

There are no additional fees or costs to customers who want to use their Microsoft 365 license to run Microsoft 365 productivity applications on WorkSpaces services, and there is no special setup or image management required. Customers can use their existing tools to deploy Microsoft 365 to WorkSpaces services. Alternatively, customers can still purchase Microsoft Office Professional to run on WorkSpaces services from AWS under the terms of our Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA).

AWS End User Computing has a strong reputation over 10 years of providing a virtual desktop experience, giving customers the flexibility to choose whatever software works best for their organization, now including Microsoft 365 applications.

Vice President of AWS Applications Dilip Kumar leads the organization responsible for business applications that bring the power of machine learning to services for supply chain, call-centers, marketing/advertising, user productivity, and retail identity and checkout. A 20-year Amazon veteran, Dilip’s focus is on developing innovations for business users across industries and verticals, delivering the same on-demand scalability, reliability, flexibility, and AI/ML expertise that drive AWS services. Connect with him on LinkedIn.