Migrating Amazon WorkSpaces services from Microsoft Office included bundles to Microsoft 365

AWS offers two choices for running office productivity applications on Amazon WorkSpaces services. You can purchase Microsoft Office as part of a WorkSpaces application bundle. Beginning August 1, 2023, you can bring Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise licenses to use on Amazon WorkSpaces services. Microsoft 365 adds to the power of WorkSpaces services 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 Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, and Business Premium licenses to run on WorkSpaces services.

This blog explains how to migrate from an Office bundle running on WorkSpaces services to Microsoft 365. The steps required to begin using Microsoft 365 on WorkSpaces instances depend on a number of factors covered in the following scenarios.

Common scenarios

Scenario #1 – Using a customized public bundle, you deployed a fleet of WorkSpaces instances. The bundle is based on Microsoft Windows Server with the Desktop Experience, using an Office license purchased from AWS.

Removing the applications alone from the existing WorkSpaces instances will not remove the AWS licensing fee for Microsoft Office.

To avoid being charged for Microsoft Office licenses, unsubscribe your WorkSpaces from Microsoft Office applications by using the Manage applications feature. In addition to removing the licensing fee for Office, this feature will remove the applications from the instances. For additional information, see the Managed applications section in the Administration guide. For guidance on automating the process, see our blog Migrating to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise at scale on Amazon WorkSpaces.

After the Office applications have been unsubscribed successfully from the WorkSpaces instance, you can now install and configure Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on your WorkSpace.

Optionally, you can create a base image with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise installed, to use for new WorkSpaces deployments.

For additional information, see our documentation on Manage applications, creating images and bundles and migrating existing WorkSpaces instances.

Scenario #2 – Using a custom bundle, you deployed a fleet of WorkSpaces instances based on bring-your-own-license (BYOL) with Windows Desktop, using an Office license purchased from AWS.

Removing the applications alone from the existing WorkSpaces instances will not remove the AWS licensing fee for Microsoft Office.

To avoid being charged for Microsoft Office licenses, unsubscribe your WorkSpaces from Microsoft Office applications by using the Manage applications feature. In addition to removing the licensing fee for Office, this feature will remove the applications from the instances. For additional information, see the Managed applications section in the Administration guide. For guidance on automating the process, see our blog Migrating to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise at scale on Amazon WorkSpaces.

After the Office applications have been unsubscribed successfully from the WorkSpaces instance, you can now install and configure Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise on your WorkSpace.

Optionally, you can create a base image with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise installed, to use for new WorkSpaces deployments.

For additional information, see our documentation on Manage applications, creating images and bundles and migrating existing WorkSpaces instances.

Scenario #3 – You have an existing WorkSpaces instance without Office installed or a non-Microsoft 365 version of Office installed.

In this scenario, the WorkSpaces instance is not running an Office bundle provided by AWS. If there are other versions of Office on the WorkSpaces instance, uninstall them prior to installing Microsoft 365 Apps. Review Microsoft recommendations for Office deployment.

Scenario #4 – You are deploying new WorkSpaces instances.

For new WorkSpaces instances, do not use an Office included bundle from AWS. Follow Microsoft’s recommendations to deploy Microsoft 365 applications. Office can be added to a custom image and bundle, or deployed after the WorkSpaces instance is launched.

Scenario #5 – You have an exception from Microsoft.

If the user has a WorkSpaces instance deployed with Office 365 and has a previous exception, verify with your Microsoft license provider that the correct bits and licenses are in place.

Automating multiple WorkSpaces

To automate the process on several WorkSpaces instances at once, review our blog Migrating to Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise at scale on Amazon WorkSpaces.

Conclusion

In this post we highlighted options for you to use Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprises licenses with Amazon WorkSpaces. Using this information, you can start planning and automating migrations to Microsoft 365.

If you’d like to discuss how to optimize the procedure described in this blog for your specific use case, we’d love to hear from you. Just reach out to your account team.

	Dave Jaskie is a Senior AWS End User Compute Solutions Architect, bringing 15 years of experience in the end-user computing space. Outside of work, Dave enjoys traveling and hiking with his wife and 3 kids.
	Dan is a Senior AWS End User Compute Solutions Architect, focusing on helping customers configure and optimize end-user computing solutions. Dan also focuses on EC2, Microsoft, and Linux based workloads. Dan has been at AWS since March 2016, and was a Premium Support escalation engineer and Specialist Technical Account Manager prior to becoming a specialist Solutions Architect.