Amazon adds Windows Server 2012 support to AWS

The Amazon-Microsoft cloud war continues to wage on, with both vying to be customers' choice for hosting Windows.

Amazon announced on November 20 that it has added Windows Server 2012 as an option for customers who want to host Windows on Amazon Web Services. Amazon already offered support for Windows Server 2003 R2, 2008 and 2008 R2 on AWS.

In late October, Microsoft announced availability of Windows Server 2012 and .Net 4.5 on Azure (in Web and worker roles). Microsoft also announced in October .Net 4.5 support for Azure Web Sites.

Amazon is playing up the fact that users can use Windows Server, including Windows Server 2012, as part of the AWS Free Usage Tier, enabling them to get 750 hours of a Micro Instance per month for a full year.

The announcement today came from a name familiar to many in the Microsoft world Just a few months after leaving Microsoft for Amazon, Tom Rizzo is back to blogging, but this time as General Manager for the Windows team in AWS. (Microsoft veteran Rizzo had worked for Microsoft for 16 years in Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint and Office 365.)

Rizzo also announced that he'll be doing a series of blog posts that will be called "Windows Wednesdays," going forward, that will be dedicated to Amazon's Windows support. He committed to trying to post at least twice a month on the topic.

With its announcement earlier this year of the addition of persistent virtual machines for Windows Azure, Microsoft also can offer customers the ability to host Windows and Linux, as well, on Windows Azure. As far as I know, this capability is still considered to be in preview form.