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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon WorkSpaces clients are available for both Windows and Mac computers as well as for the iPad, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets.

How am I saving on licensing cost then? If I can install the client on a Linux machine, it makes sense. If I need an Apple or a Windows machine I'm ... double licensing?

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I don't see them touting it as saving licenses. BUT presumably you can save by making these floating instances.

If you have 1000 workers using software locally, you need 1000 licenses.

If you have 1000 workers using software in the cloud, but only 100 at any time, you only need 100 licenses.

This could be an awesome option for Chromebooks too. Shame they're only targeting large IT departments.

Would be nice if Amazon had their own Chromebook equivalent stripped down for this use case. Maybe soon.

Kindle XL HD Flamethrower Lappytop.

It seems like a marriage made in heaven to me.

Because you are probably buying hardware from HP, Dell, or Lenovo with mandatory OEM licensing. (Unless there's actually a cost-efficient option from a major manufacturer to purchase a large number of machines without Windows?)

I don't think the objective is to save on licensing costs. I think it's to save on hardware and possibly deployment costs. Also, the primary use case seems to be using a thin client.

Be nice to though, and it seems like it should be an easy thing...

The double licensing is problem, but this would work nicely with a BYOD policy. You could use your own computer anywhere, but corporate data is still stored in a secure location.

look at the TCO page for the announcement [1]. The biggest cost savings Amazon is touting lies in reduced IT staff and total elimination of hardware costs. By their calculations, the licensing is only 3% or $3 per seat for a 1,000 person business unit.

[1] http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2013/11/tco-comparison-amazon-wor...

That's the elimination of server hardware costs, though I can't imagine just chucking stuff in the cloud with no local backup. (Amazon has lost data before.)

There's still a client PC cost...

There are also the times when either Amazon (or Google Apps & Docs) or the network goes down and you have the odd thousand people sitting around wondering what to do. That's always lots of fun.

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