AWS launches enterprise tier of its QuickSight business intelligence tool

Public cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced the availability of an enterprise tier of its Amazon QuickSight cloud software for business intelligence (BI). AWS launched QuickSight out of preview last month after introducing it a year ago.

The new Enterprise Edition stands out from the Standard Edition in a few important ways. First, organizations can connect it with Microsoft’s Active Directory identity management software, whether it’s running on AWS or in an on-premises data center.

Additionally, it offers encryption of data at rest using AWS-managed keys, AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr wrote in a blog post.

AWS offers many kinds of cloud software atop its infrastructure. For companies that already rely on AWS for some services, starting to use AWS for BI might be a natural move. Then again, companies may choose to stick with their existing BI and data analytics vendors, or do that while experimenting with QuickSight. Now AWS’ offering is better equipped to meet the needs of larger organizations.

The nomenclature for the new service tier is notable. AWS has not used “Enterprise Edition” to distinguish a flavor of an existing service in the past. The Amazon subsidiary has been doing more and more to target larger companies with more traditional IT practices. A product name could be considered just marketing, but it could also be considered another thing AWS can do to signal to companies that its offerings are indeed ready to support the biggest companies. Also in that vein, earlier this week Amazon introduced AWS Managed Services.

The new tier costs twice as much as the Standard Edition: $18 per user per month when paid annually, or $24 per month when paid per month. Additionally, organizations will pay 38 cents per GB of SPICE capacity beyond the included 10GB — the price for Standard Edition is 25 cents extra per GB.