Amazon Takes On Microsoft, Google With WorkMail For Businesses 65
alphadogg writes Amazon Web Services today launched a new product to its expansive service catalog in the cloud: WorkMail is a hosted email platform for enterprises that could wind up as a replacement for Microsoft and Google messaging systems. The service is expected to cost $4 per user per month for a 50GB email inbox. It's integrated with many of AWS's other cloud services too, including its Zocalo file synchronization and sharing platform. The combination will allow IT shops to set up a hosted email platform and link it to a file sharing system.
Spam filtering, unlimited aliases, search, rules (Score:4, Informative)
My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.
Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.
My top priority is privacy.
Does their service have built-in encryption, such that they cannot decrypt the message contents?
I can do spam filtering, searching, and other rule-based operations on my home system. What I *can't* do locally is prevent others from sticking their noses in my business.
Whether it be my ISP adding ads to the data stream for goods and services I might be interested in, or the website provider tailoring ads for goods and services that might be of interest to me, or my home country looking for perceived criminal activity, or someone *else's* country looking to steal corporate secrets or leverage me into forced compliance, or any of a number of other reasons.
Of late I'm actually pretty interested in the privacy aspect.
How high up on your list of priorities is privacy?
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Informative)
My top priorities for email service are quality of spam filtering, support for unlimited aliases, search, and rules. I think labels work better than folders for categorization. I have not found any Amazon documentation which addresses these issues.
My top priority is privacy.
Does their service have built-in encryption, such that they cannot decrypt the message contents?
Not if you want server side search. Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).
If you really don't trust anyone with your email, tell everyone that emails you to encrypt everything with your public key, then you can decrypt the messages on an airgapped computer when you're ready to read them.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).
No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.
Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end-... [github.com]
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Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).
No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.
And how close to you think the internet is to ubiquitous client side encryption? Oh, right.
You might as well speculate how secure mail would be if it were personally delivered by unicorns.
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Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).
No, it doesn't. S/MIME, PGP-mail, etc. Of course that only works if the party you're e-mailing can also use client-side e-mail encryption.
And how close to you think the internet is to ubiquitous client side encryption? Oh, right.
You might as well speculate how secure mail would be if it were personally delivered by unicorns.
I'll add that the OP could use S/MIME and/or PGP right now with any mail provider (as I said in my original reply), at the expense of server side searching (which is one of the best things about Gmail -- I can search years of mail archives instantly)... all he has to do is convince everyone he corresponds with to do the same. Oh, and zealously protect his private key.
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Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end- [github.com]...
Or you can have it on Firefox right now with enigmail. Or well, you could. Maybe it doesn't work any more. I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.
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I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.
This is the biggest problem. I have two friends, both technology savvy (one works in IT, in healthcare, so is very familiar with encryption) and both are conspiracy savvy, too.
I got both of them using PGP at one point, fully integrated with whatever email client they were using but couldn't get either one to sustain use of it, despite both of them fully aware of the NSA, surveillance, etc.
Maybe they just don't like me, but if ge
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Google is working on enabling OpenPGP-encrypted e-mail for Gmail with a Chrome extension: https://github.com/google/end- [github.com]...
Or you can have it on Firefox right now with enigmail. Or well, you could. Maybe it doesn't work any more. I had nobody to exchange encrypted email with, so I no longer have it installed.
Yup, that is the issue. I'm weakly hopeful that having Google behind it will encourage wider use. Weakly.
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Though you have to trust AWS with the plain text at some time since every mail server and client has to hand the message over in plain text (it may come in over an encrypted tunnel, but it needs to be decrypted by their mailservers).
Huh, I didn't know that.
If figured that the message body and subject text could be encrypted separately from the routing (and other) header information.
Today, I learned.
Re:Privacy (Score:4, Informative)
WorkMail Security Controls Let’s talk about security for a bit. WorkMail includes a number of security features and controls that will allow it to meet the needs of many types of organizations. Here’s an overview of some of the most important features and controls:
Location Control – The WorkMail administrator can choose to create mailboxes in any supported AWS region. All mail and other data will be stored within the region and will not be transferred to any other region. During the Preview, WorkMail will be supported in the US East (Northern Virginia) and Europe (Ireland) regions, with more to follow over time.
S/MIME – Data in transit to and from Outlook clients and certain iPhone and iPad apps is encrypted using S/MIME. Data in transit to other clients is encrypted using SSL.
Stored Data Encryption – Data at rest (messages, contacts, attachments, and metadata) is encrypted using keys supplied and managed by KMS ( https://aws.amazon.com/kms/ [amazon.com] ).
Message Scanning – Incoming and outgoing email messages and attachments are scanned for malware, viruses, and spam.
Mobile Device Policies & Actions – The WorkMail administrator can selectively require encryption, password protection, and automatic screen locking for mobile devices. The administrator can also remotely wipe a lost or mislaid mobile device if necessary.
Sounds like it has the makings of a usable service.
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How high up on your list of priorities is privacy?
Top of the list. Has to be, for compliance reasons. Right behind that is an archiver that would also pass muster under those same rules. Aparently, no one wants to sell a "cloud" solution that includes those things.
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I gave up on built-in spam filtering a long time ago. Instead I route email thru a cloud antispam provider. It's super cheap and very convenient.
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unlimited aliases (Score:2)
support for unlimited aliases
I really REALLY wish gmail had this. Or at least 10 aliases if not unlimtied. yeah, you can create multiple accounts, but their integration on Google is terrible. I would pay for this.
Incoming reprisal... (Score:1)
WorkFemail
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Amazon would do anything for your love (Score:2)
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i wonder if it will suggest others emails that i might be interested in? /meatloaf
Is it NSA compatible? (Score:1)
I mean, when they get FISA/NSL/BS letter to search my company's R&D emails so they can steal my technology or commit insider trading... but my non-US company is hosted on non-US Amazon AWS, will they still acquiesce to their request?
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I mean, when they get FISA/NSL/BS letter to search my company's R&D emails so they can steal my technology or commit insider trading... but my non-US company is hosted on non-US Amazon AWS, will they still acquiesce to their request?
Yes, they will.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Another Kloud Service. At last my company can have its email scanned and delivered to my competitors. Just what I needed.
Most small businesses are better off entrusting their mail to a cloud provider than to try to run their own email service and trying to keep it secure and highly available.
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> Rackspace
In general yes they're great, but when we used Rackspace, we used their proprietary garbage Microsoft Exchange product. That is probably what the GP was talking about. It is complete and utter garbage. It constantly loses email. After switching to running our own server (a ten year-old Dell with CentOS, Postfix, SquirrelMal, etc., all pretty easy to setup and all free), the amount of mail from customers more than tripled, and we had to hire new people. It saved our business. Because Microsoft is so embarrassed by that Exchange product, they can't release source code so Rackspace can't fix any of the problems. Exchange is a nightmare, but trying to do it at the scale of Rackspace is hell. There is a reason, for example, the forty person team at Microsoft I worked for from 2002-2007 had over $200k worth of hardware to run mail very poorly. We spent about $6k per user in just hardware! When you overspec hardware by that much, Exchange doesn't lose email as often, but even that massive kit would lose messages if someone attached a file sent to the entire team. Then Exchange would thrash for several minutes and lose all other incoming mail.
I managed exchange 2007 for 500 users and we had about $14K of hardware, including the replicated Exchange server in the remote data center (but not including the AD servers and the tape backup hardware). We lost the primary site a few times due to power failure, and we had a RAID controller failure in the remote node that brought it down, and we never lost any email or had any significant unscheduled downtime. We did have to restore a few deleted employee mailboxes from backup tape due to a lawsuit, but t
it's not free with prime? (Score:2)
everything else seems to be
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There's Amazon Prime for Business?
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Only a matter of time.
When is it going to turn profit? (Score:1)
But what is most amazing is that it does not seem to have made any profits yet.
Re:When is it going to turn profit? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is actually by design. Their model is not profit, it's growth and innovation. It's a new economy where the balance sheet is becoming less and less a key factor for large corporations, and for the most part shareholders are ok with it because investments are made in the short term and the skyrocketing share price is more attractive than actual equity or dividends.
I'm not saying I agree, just that this is not by mistake that they don't make a profit.
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Sounds like a legal, high-tech Ponzi scheme.
Link to Amazon's official announcement (Score:4, Interesting)
Here is the link [amazon.com] to Amazon's official announcement so you don't have to go through the networkworld article.
It is notable that this is not just about email as it also supports many of the other features offered by Outlook like calendaring, tasks, etc. It also works with existing Outlook and ActiveSync clients so it is easy for an enterprise to start using it.
As I'm not an administrator of mail systems, I would like to hear from some experts about how the features Amazon has introduced today compare to the existing enterprise offerings.
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Btw, here is Microsoft's Advertized "details" (they call theirs "Top Features") for exchange: http://products.office.com/en-... [office.com]
I know, I know, you can go on TechNet and find anything you want. Do you really think that Amazon doesn'
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. Anything cheaper and more administration friendly than Exchange is welcome.
That is where o365/hosted exchange comes in. Amazon are currently seeing MS market grow with triple figure growth percentages and email is one of the big reasons as enterprises no longer have to worry about the complexities of running it themselves.
IMAP support (Score:2)
How about IMAP support that doesn't completely suck?
o365 is such a huge POS.
I wanna Try (Score:1)