Work From Home Offer – Extended – Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon Chime

On April 1, 2020, we announced offers for new customers of Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon Chime.  For Amazon Workspaces, we enabled new customers to use up to 50 WorkSpaces with the Windows Standard bundle plus a collection of other WorkSpaces bundles for free so they could help their workforces work from home during the COVID-19 outbreak. For Amazon Chime, we offered access to Amazon Chime Pro features at no cost in order to empower our customers to communicate and collaborate from anywhere.  Both of these offers were available until June 30th. Customers tell us that while many regions are opening up, many workers are still working from home and may continue to do so for months, quarters, or even permanently.  To help customers continue to keep their workers safe while keeping them productive  we are extending both free tier offers through September 30, 2020.

New Amazon WorkSpaces customers can take advantage of this offer by signing up for the Amazon WorkSpaces Free Tier which allows you to provision up to 50 WorkSpaces with the Windows Standard bundle. Amazon WorkSpaces customers currently using the Free Tier will be able to continue doing so through September 30, 2020. Additionally, the Free Tier includes one WorkSpace with the Windows Performance bundle, one WorkSpace with the Windows Value bundle, and two WorkSpaces with the Linux Standard bundle. These WorkSpaces can be used in any AWS Region where WorkSpaces Free Tier is currently available.

New customers can also communicate and collaborate remotely through audio, video and chat using certain Amazon Chime Pro features. This enables customers to schedule and join meetings of up to 250 participants and use advanced features like meeting recording. Amazon Chime customers currently using the free offer will have access to these Pro features until September 30th (see Amazon Chime pricing page for offer terms and conditions).

We are proud to help customers like GrubHub and Juniper with their remote working needs and we hope to help more by extending this offer.

“GrubHub, Inc. is a billion dollar food-service online and mobile platform featuring the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners in the US. As an essential business to support local restaurants and promote the safety of our drivers, GrubHub leveraged Amazon WorkSpaces to ensure business continuity and support the safety of our employees by moving all departments to a Work From Home (WFH) model. The Corporate Cloud Services team at GrubHub was able to scale from a handful of Amazon WorkSpaces to over 1,200 in two days. Amazon WorkSpaces easily accommodated our real-time customer communication and contact channels allowing 100% of our workforce and new employees to be WFH, accelerating our BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strategy. GrubHub will be able to sustain our high-quality standards for customer service during this uncertain time while having the ability to scale up or down quickly based on new information and changing work patterns. GrubHub now has the flexibility to control cost and scale this virtual desktop environment to meet the current needs and future needs of our customers, restaurant partners, and drivers for whatever comes next.” – Justinian Fortenberry, Chief Information Security Officer – Grubhub Holdings, Inc.

“Amazon Chime is something we could roll out swiftly and scale with a per-user, per-day charging structure, unlike other services that charge annual subscriptions. It’s likely that 20 percent of our workforce missed out from not being able to connect, now there are no concerns, with that initial Amazon Chime teleconference the most successful session we ever had. Putting Amazon Chime in a familiar place has alleviated a lot of the pressure of having to learn—or teach—a whole new identity management system. Our employees were concerned about working from home and how it’s going to affect them. Now they can join a meeting and talk to their colleagues and simply share documents and screens, which is going to make their lives a lot easier. It’s simple things like this that are going to make people feel more comfortable in changing and challenging times.” – Dan Beeston, ICT manager – Juniper

You can find additional details on this offer on the Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon Chime pricing pages. You can get started immediately by logging in to the AWS Management Console.

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