Enterprise and end-user services
AWS sells a small group of services aimed at end users rather than at engineering teams — virtual desktops, application streaming, a contact centre, and formerly email, document storage and conferencing. It is the part of the AWS catalogue that has shrunk the most. What remains is the WorkSpaces family and Amazon Connect; one service has an end-of-support date still ahead of it, and four have already gone. Both groups are documented below rather than deleted, because they are what older architecture diagrams and half the search results still name.
Virtual desktops and application streaming
Section titled “Virtual desktops and application streaming”Amazon WorkSpaces is desktop-as-a-service. It provisions persistent Windows or Linux desktops that users reach from a client application or a browser, with the desktop itself running inside your VPC rather than on the endpoint. Data stays in the account, the desktop is reachable from an unmanaged device without that device holding the data, and provisioning a new starter is an API call rather than a hardware order. Seasonal, contract and offshore workers are the usual case, along with regulated work where the endpoint cannot be trusted.
Amazon WorkSpaces Applications streams individual applications to a browser instead of a whole desktop. It is the service formerly called Amazon AppStream 2.0, and the rename is worth knowing because most existing material still uses the old name. It suits a single expensive or hard-to-install application — an engineering or design package, a legacy line-of- business tool — delivered to people who should not have to install it, and product trials where a prospect needs the software for an hour.
Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser is a managed remote browser: web applications render on AWS-managed infrastructure and only the pixels reach the user, so an internal site can be opened from an unmanaged device without extending the corporate network to it. It is the successor to Amazon WorkLink, which has been retired — the WorkLink product page now serves Secure Browser.
Amazon WorkSpaces Core provides the underlying desktop infrastructure and APIs to third-party VDI software, for organisations that want to keep their existing VDI management plane.
Contact centre
Section titled “Contact centre”Amazon Connect is a managed cloud contact centre. It provides the telephony, inbound and outbound call handling, interactive voice response and automated routing, and integrates with Amazon Lex for conversational responses and with CRM systems so an agent’s screen is populated from the caller’s identity. Note the name: it is Amazon Connect, not AWS Connect.
Services with an end-of-support date
Section titled “Services with an end-of-support date”Amazon WorkMail — managed email and calendaring, compatible with Outlook, IMAP and mobile mail clients. AWS ends support on 31 March 2027, after which the console and the resources behind it are no longer accessible, and the service has not accepted new customers since 30 April 2026. There is no AWS successor: AWS points customers at third-party mail products and supplies a mailbox export path, so anything still running on WorkMail needs a migration plan and a destination chosen now.
Services that have been withdrawn
Section titled “Services that have been withdrawn”- Amazon Chime — the meetings and video conferencing application. AWS ended support on 20 February 2026. The Amazon Chime SDK, which is a different product — the building blocks for adding audio, video and messaging to your own application — continues and is unaffected.
- Amazon WorkDocs — managed document storage, versioning and sharing. Support ended on 25 April 2025, and the sites, APIs and Drive client went with it; customer data was purged rather than retained, so there is nothing left to export. Document storage on AWS now means S3 plus whichever collaboration product the organisation already uses.
- Amazon WorkLink — secure access to internal web applications from mobile devices, as an alternative to a VPN. Retired, replaced by Amazon WorkSpaces Secure Browser above.
- Alexa for Business — Alexa devices and skills managed centrally across an enterprise, for meeting rooms and voice access to corporate data. Retired; Amazon’s remaining offer in this area is Alexa Smart Properties, which is sold by Amazon rather than through AWS.