Amazon adds more Windows compatibility to cloud

Amazon has broadened Windows compatibility in the Amazon Web Services cloud, bringing SQL Server to its database service and adding .NET language support to its Elastic Beanstalk platform.

The compatibility improvements were announced by Amazon on Tuesday. They are part of a push by the cloud computing giant to "simplify the Windows development experience on AWS," Jeff Barr, a cloud computing senior manager for Amazon wrote in a blog post.

"Today's announcement... marks another important step in our commitment to increase the flexibility for AWS customers to use the choice of operating system, programming language, development tools and database software that meet their application requirements," Werner Vogels, Amazon's chief technology officer, wrote in a separate blog post.

The addition of support for the Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise versions of SQL Server 2008 R2 for AWS's relational database service lets developers outsource the administration of the database to Amazon. The company already supports Oracle on RDS.

Elastic Beanstalk is a tool that simplifies uploading and running applications on top of the AWS cloud. It launched in January 2011 with support for the Java programming language, followed by support for PHP. By adding .NET, Amazon is giving Windows developers another cloud platform on which to run their applications.

Amazon competes with Microsoft via its Windows Azure cloud. Both companies have introduced free offers for their cloud services to lure developers.

Over the past few years, Amazon has rolled out more and more Windows technology onto its cloud. Most recently, the company brought Windows Server 2008 R2 to its free cloud offer.