What is our primary use case?
My main use case for WorkSpaces Manager is to manage, automate, and optimize our AWS WorkSpaces across multiple environments and multiple clients, covering automation, provisioning, de-provisioning of workspaces, and cost optimization.
We had clients with Amazon WorkSpaces, and as the clients were growing day by day, the requirement was to make management easier since managing WorkSpaces daily is a hassle. At that point, we evaluated multiple vendors and options, and then we came across this solution. We used it to manage 300 or 400 workspaces. Some of them did not belong to clients, so we deleted or paused those. We reduced the count of VDI using WorkSpaces Manager significantly, and it helped us monitor everything.
What is most valuable?
The best features WorkSpaces Manager offers include automation, lifecycle management which is outstanding, schedule, stop, start, de-provision workflow, employee departure workflow initiation, and self-service capabilities.
Out of those features, I find myself using lifecycle management the most because it helps us take actionable items, including stopping, deleting, and de-provisioning.
WorkSpaces Manager has positively impacted our organization by dropping the operational burden on our cloud infrastructure team. Previously we were manually keeping monthly audits and checking workspaces from multiple environments. With WorkSpaces Manager, everything is in one console, making it easy for us to review and take action.
What needs improvement?
WorkSpaces Manager's multi-region management could be stronger. Managing WorkSpaces across different AWS regions from a single unified point still has some friction.
Deeper integration with AWS Cost Explorer for combined reporting would have been very valuable.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using WorkSpaces Manager for approximately five years.
What other advice do I have?
WorkSpaces Manager automation has greatly impacted our team's workflow and the client's experience. The client experience is now excellent, and our internal team has less work, making life significantly easier.
I rate WorkSpaces Manager around eight on a scale of one to ten. I chose an eight because it makes sensible automation decisions about Workspace management, compliance, risk, audit, and logging. However, we would welcome more AI-driven security anomaly detection and unusual Workspace pattern identification.
Regarding WorkSpaces Manager's AI capabilities, the usage analysis and detection accuracy is high. Our expectation regarding false positive de-provisioning triggers has been minimal after we set the inactive threshold appropriately. The accuracy and reliability of output from WorkSpaces Manager is perfect.
My advice to others looking into using WorkSpaces Manager is that if you have multiple regions with multiple WorkSpaces in your environment, this solution will help you see everything in one console from a single point and take automation actions, which is great because automation is essential in the lifecycle of WorkSpaces. The overall rating I would give to WorkSpaces Manager is eight.
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
