This week, Amazon announced their WorkMail solution as a business-class email and calendaring solution in the cloud. Over the past several years, Amazon has produced some amazing solutions. But is WorkMail something that the enterprise CIO should really take note of? And are we really in need of another email and calendaring alternative? There is a very important lesson to learn here. Read on.
Ask yourself this question: If this press release were launched by a completely different company, say Acme, would it have garnered as much attention and praise? Probably not. So, why are so many interested in this announcement?
New and innovative features?
If you read the details in the press release and on the WorkMail preview site, it is all motherhood and apple pie. Nothing new. Nothing innovative. In fact, many of the touted features are merely table stakes for any email and calendaring solution today. In order to supplant an incumbent, especially something as ingrained as email and calendaring, there needs to be a significant advantage.
Simply stating support for SSL, Active Directory or a Web-client is not going to get anyone excited. Or at least it should not. Those should be table stakes. If, however, you do get excited about those, it may be time to re-think your priorities. Conversely, the absence of those features should immediately garner a no-go.
Cloud-based alternatives?
The argument Amazon is making is really against on-premise email solutions today, namely Microsoft Exchange. The argument is for cloud-based email and calendaring solutions. The irony is that there are two solid, mature solutions in place today: Google Apps and Microsoft 365. There are other cloud-based solutions in the market today, but they are a distant 3, 4, 5, etc behind Google and Microsoft. In addition, WorkMail’s cost is right in line with that of Microsoft and Google. So, why try to compete? What is the advantage?
Enterprise integration
Enterprises are increasingly in need of better integration between solutions. Email, calendaring and file storage are some of the top areas of need. That is why we have seen the Google and Microsoft solutions include these core functions. But integration goes quite a bit further than simply backend integration.
Quite often, companies forget about the users and their perspective. This is one issue Google has faced from day-1. Using Google’s ‘tag’ approach vs. Microsoft’s files/ folders approach in use for years creates a significant learning curve. And that is one reason Microsoft 365 has seen a marked uptick in interest over Google Apps.
Anything in this space that is less than mature is simply an extremely hard sell to any enterprise. It is simply too risky to put email, calendaring and file storage to a less than mature solution. In addition, the integration needs to be solid and robust. It is not clear how/ if WorkMail is able to address this.
Marketing
The only thing I can come back to is marketing. Launching WorkMail is an opportunity for Amazon to garner wider interest and keep their name in the press. If that was their goal, they succeeded based on the number of articles written about WorkMail. If it were WorkMail by Acme, I doubt we would have heard about it.
Keeping your company in the public’s eye with fresh launches is one of several key initiatives. Launching WorkMail certainly does that. But in order to remain of interest, it needs to differentiate itself. In that area, WorkMail has failed. There is another side effect in that the perception will start to question why Amazon is going after such a mature market like email/ calendaring with such a basic offering. It definitely leaves some open questions.
My take
Amazon is heading down a questionable path. Enterprises are not chomping at the bit for a different email and calendaring alternative. They are, however, looking for easier ways to adopt and leverage public cloud solutions. Same goes for service providers.
My advice to Amazon would be to focus on what they do best and not go after email and calendaring. There are still a number of gaps in the public cloud space that could use their expertise and leadership.