Amazon WorkSpaces is now generally available in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Region. Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed, secure Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution that runs on AWS. With WorkSpaces, customers can provision virtual, cloud-based Windows and Linux desktops for their users, providing them with access to the documents, applications, and resources they need, anywhere, anytime, from any supported device. They can pay either monthly or hourly, just for the Amazon WorkSpaces they launch.

Mumbai is our 14th region and is part of our continuing commitment to always making it easier for workers to securely access their applications from home, remote offices or anywhere. For a list of regions where Amazon WorkSpaces is available, see the AWS Region Table.

The expansion comes as we approach the one-year anniversary of global travel restrictions, lockdowns, and work from home (WFH) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have spent the past year helping customers across the globe rapidly shift to WFH. For example, we helped LearningMate – a technology company offering domain expertise in teaching and learning solutions – move their workforce to WFH.

“LearningMate seamlessly transitioned to a remote work environment by rolling out Amazon WorkSpaces. We integrated Amazon WorkSpaces with our on-premise Active Directory over VPN to ensure that all our employees have secure access to our corporate data and internal applications. Our IT team was able to evaluate Amazon WorkSpaces within a week and ramped up to over 100 workspaces within a month. With Amazon WorkSpaces, we were able to operationalize over 200 new hires in a COVID-19 lockdown situation without any impact to our growth,” said Palash Sinha, IT Head, LearningMate.

With our availability of the Mumbai Region, customers can provision WorkSpaces closer to their users and data, providing a more responsive experience.

Customers in the Mumbai Region can also take advantage of WorkSpaces Streaming Protocol (WSP), the new, cloud-native streaming protocol that enables a consistent user experience even on unreliable networks. If workers run into networks with high packet loss or unstable at home or office networks, WSP might be able to help. I know it has helped me with my home network.

WorkSpaces for Government and Highly Regulated Industries

Government organizations and highly regulated industries like financial services must adhere to strict compliance and data sovereignty requirements in India. WorkSpaces’ expansion allows customers to better meet data sovereignty requirements without the cost and complexity of building on-premises VDI.

RBL Bank, for example, is one of the leading private sector banks in India. The bank is looking forward to moving their current WorkSpaces deployment to the Mumbai region after using it to enable work from home since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When COVID-19 came, we needed to move many of our employees to work from home overnight. We turned to Amazon WorkSpaces for hundreds of workers and we were able to get them up and running in 10 days, while maintaining the same data security we needed to support our business,” said Sankarson Banerjee, CIO of RBL Bank. “With the opening of the Mumbai region, we look forward to bringing WorkSpaces to more users. It will also help us raise the bar in the user experience while meeting our data sovereignty commitments. AWS’s continued pace of innovation is helping us to add agility to our workforce in ways we did not think possible just a few years ago.”

WorkSpaces for Contact Center, Development, or Back Office

For companies that provide services such as customer support, development, or back office services like accounting or IT support, using Amazon WorkSpaces in Mumbai can enable a more reliable way of giving users a persistent desktop while helping to reduce the risk of data leakage, by using the closest possible AWS Region. Amazon WorkSpaces makes it easy to enable temporary, seasonal, or full-time employees with all the resources they need to be successful in a secure desktop experience.

Wipro Limited is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, which provides various services including Data Analytics and AI, Business Process Management, Digital Strategy and Transformation, and Cyber Security and Risk. Capitalizing on the opportunity to securely help customers transition to remote working, Wipro has developed a custom IT-as-a-Service offering called Wipro virtuadesk™ leveraging Amazon WorkSpaces for one of its contact center customers to enhance work from home productivity. This solution enabled the customer to implement a bring your own device (BYOD) policy for their users and improved performance 10x while reducing the overall total cost of operations (TCO).

“We helped some of our most security-conscious customers run their operations in India across a wide array of workloads leveraging Amazon WorkSpaces. We provided them with secure access, especially for their employees working remotely. The feedback has been phenomenal.  WorkSpaces’ fully-managed Desktop as a Service (DaaS) offers the type of agility our customers need for seasonal and temporary hiring and changes in the business landscape,” said Anshul Sarin, Vice President, Cloud & Infrastructure Services, APMEA, Wipro Limited. “The addition of the Mumbai region meets one of the top customer asks of improving both performance and security. Wipro’s virtuadesk, powered by Amazon WorkSpaces is a state-of-art solution that provides seamless experience to customers in remote working spaces. Our broad portfolio and service delivery capabilities on cloud, coupled with AWS WorkSpaces’ agile and scalable features will help customers achieve transformative outcomes.”