Amazon Appstream Reviews

I personally don't use the tool. I am not a consumer of it. I basically designed it. I work for an IT company and have designed and implemented Amazon Appstream and Workspace in many organizations.

Most of the time, the tool is for app virtualization or used when you don't need a permanent desktop. There are two flavors in Amazon Appstream. If you don't need a dedicated desktop, that is where Amazon Appstream is beneficial, and the other one is if you only need application virtualization to be given to your end user, and not a complete whole desktop. For example, if there is a manufacturing company and you have lots of front-line users who just come in, their job is to access just one application. Instead of giving them a whole desktop version or a whole desktop, you just give them an application, and then they just go on to a Chrome browser, and they get on Amazon Appstream and access that particular application.

Technically, if you look closely, the latency and performance are better than those of the other providers, specifically SaaS providers. The tool is good from a latency, efficiency, and network point of view.

There is also a way in the tool for retaining customers' favorites, but it is not available natively. When you log in to your desktop, on the desktop or laptop that you are working on, you have your favorites, you have your document repository, like your documents, your personal documents that you have on your computer. I saw that there was no native way of retaining those in a non-persistent desktop.

The end-user has to perform dual authentication. One is for AWS authentication, and the other used to be for Active Directory, so it is a little problematic for the end users, as it is a double work for them. I don't know if the tool has lately dealt with the area of dual authentication or not.

I have experience with Amazon Appstream. I have not used the tool as an end user, but I have experience as an admin. My company serves as a service provider and system integrator for Amazon.

Every product has bugs in it. I would not say that it is a very buggy product.

I have not called the solution's technical support because I used to work directly with them. I have worked directly with the engineering team of Amazon Appstream. I work from a B2B standpoint and not from an end-user standpoint, so I cannot rate the technical support. I have an edge of being able to reach out to the tool's support team as I personally know some of them.

When it comes to the installation, setup, and deployment of Amazon Appstream, everything depends on what you really want. If you take a big organization, they have a lot of compliance and security around them, so you need to follow that. If you are just looking from an end-user perspective or just as a SaaS tool, then I think it is pretty easy.

First of all, everything depends on your requirements. I need to understand your requirements. Suppose you are a completely heavy user of Windows. In that case, you should avoid using Amazon Appstream because Amazon charges extra money on top of the license fee that you pay for Appstream to be used with Microsoft products on AWS. Essentially, you end up paying AWS, and then you end up paying Microsoft, so you pay double the charges, which is one of the shortcomings of Amazon Appstream, and it is also because Amazon and Windows are competitors. If you are looking for a desktop and you don't have a preference, like you want to use Citrix, Microsoft 365 desktop, or Azure-based desktop, then from an end-user perspective, I would say it is pretty easy to configure Amazon Appstream. It is a pretty easily configurable tool if you are just looking from a personal view of an end user. You can configure it pretty quickly. The turnaround time for launching the desktop is also pretty quick, which is also good from an end-user standpoint. It works pretty well. If you have a good internet connection, there is barely any lag in it.

There are still points or opportunities for improvement in the product, especially when it comes to integrations with Microsoft technologies and security, and I am not talking from an end user perspective. I am talking from an enterprise-class or enterprise implementation point of view. I would say there are a couple of opportunities where the tool can be better.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Some companies use applications like Word or Excel, and they can leverage cloud services to optimize their hardware consumption. For example, with Azure, you can create virtual desktops where users can access applications from the cloud. This setup means employees don’t use local resources. Everything happens in the cloud server. You don't need to worry about upgrading hardware annually, as everything is handled in the cloud. You only need to install the application once, and then everything, including data and computing resources, is managed on the cloud server. This approach simplifies management and reduces the need for frequent hardware upgrades.

You might experience some performance issues, such as delays in data retrieval. It can happen around ten percent of the time, especially when using Azure machines.

It is as stable as you need.

In the cloud, there's a concept of on-demand usage. You can access services when you need them and stop or delete them when you don't, which saves money and reduces the need for long-term planning. If you need to expand or scale up or want to scale down or delete resources, you can do so immediately. This flexibility means you don't have to worry as much about future needs or potential disasters. The scalability and availability of cloud services are good.

We have over one million and seventy million users, so many resources are available to support you.

The initial setup is straightforward. After creating a machine on the Active Directory servers, you set up the necessary files and applications, including AutoCAD and other services. You then convert this machine into an image. Once the image is ready, you can create a smaller machine for each user based on this image. Setting up each user typically takes about half an hour. This process is efficient and manageable. 

You can integrate it with any service or tool you need.

The product is cheap.

The Workspace service is better than others. While similar to services like S3, it offers more suitable features. The main difference is that Workspace provides a desktop interface with applications, while S3 focuses more on stability and storage. With Workspace, you get a more comprehensive computing experience, including access to all your applications and files. It’s generally a better option if you need a complete desktop environment.

Managing cloud services involves setting up servers that include main applications, like those used by a bank. For instance, if the bank uses Excel and other applications, these can be hosted on a cloud server, such as AWS EC2. You can manage many users through user management systems and integrate this with Microsoft for user management. Each user will get their own space on the server for their data, and the IT team will install the applications they use, like Excel. Everything is handled on the server; users access their applications and data through this setup.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.