Amazon to ditch WorkDocs sharing service, support countdown begins Amazon is killing its WorkDocs document sharing and content collaboration service, notifying users that sign-ups are no longer available and giving them a year to migrate any data stored. WorkDocs is a fully managed platform hosted on Amazon's AWS cloud for creating, editing, and sharing content, similar to Google Workspace or …
This is a Richard move. When I was at AWS we made fun of Google for constantly shutting down services. Now it is 6 like we Amazon is just as bad now.
I agree with the reporter. This sends a terrible message to customers about the future of the cloud services they use and the lifespan of their data future in the cloud.
Come on Amazon. Don't be a Richard.
"We are always innovating on behalf of customers, which means we must sometimes make the difficult decision to pivot when we believe our resources should be invested elsewhere to better serve them,"
In what way is it on behalf of customers to bin the investment customers have made in the service?
From the customers' PoV the message is clear: you can't trust somebody else's computer.
So what it really reads is "We are shutting down this service to make computing room for AI services".
I use Dropbox as an off-site cloud storage service, and to allow file use on multiple computers. I do keep a local and a off-site terrestrial (!) backup. I know I don't have such a great storage need as Enterprises, but we should have seen this sort of thing coming.
I wonder whether companies are lazily storing far more data than they actually need to. And whether it is worth keeping it all live. If it is rarely needed, archive it on physical media. No subs. No continuous energy usage. No threat of being hacked. If you need an obscure file, someone can retrieve it from the company data library after a security checked request. For long term (multi-decade) storage of minimally accessed material, printing it once on good quality paper or microfiching it may negate the need for replacing obsolete media or migrating between services.
You are quite right, of course. But it needs long term thinking and upfront investment to set up such an archive. The CEOs who listen to the cloud salesdroids may well only be thinking a few years ahead to their next move or even no further then the end of the next quarter.
I don’t rent space on some guy’s computer somewhere that may or may not burn down or get hijacked or dubbed off by a disgruntled gruntler at any second.
What do you take me for, some kind of stupid idiot or something?!
(I bought my own obsolete servers, 100% down and $0 a month. “Obsolete,” but still vastly more powerful than I will ever need.)
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