Amazon WorkDocs Goes Head To Head With Dropbox, OneDrive And Drive

Amazon’s WorkDocs file sync and share service is available for Live Preview to users with an AWS account number. Although it’s Windows-only at the moment, it’s another option in the increasingly competitive file storage business that is a key battlefront in the growing collaboration market. WorkDocs, which was once known as Zocalo, integrates wth File Explorer, and offers some other interesting features.

WorkDocs Drive offers all the usual features you’d expect from a file sync and share service. There are options for offline access as well as options for sharing links to files and online collaboration. All comms between Amazon’s servers and your endpoint – which includes Windows 7, 8, 10+, and Windows Server 2008, 2012 R2, and 2016 – are encrypted and the company boasts HIPPA eligibility and PCI DSS compliance.

It’s early days and the lack of cross-platform compatibility will need to be resolved before WorkDocs becomes a broadly useful solution. There have been many challengers to the dominance of Dropbox, Microsoft and Google when it comes to file sync and share services so Amazon will have their work cut out forging a viable market. But their other services and gives them an advantage.

Many of the others, particularly Dropbox, have been expanding their API footprint and deploying more network infrastructure. This is something Amazon can do with all their various services.

For example, as well as file sync and share, WorkDocs could integrate backup and archiving services, thus simplifying some document lifecycle challenges.

You can sign up for WorkDocs Drive for Windows Live Preview here – remember, you’ll need and AWS account number.