AWS adds Windows Server on EC2

SEATTLE, USA: Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced that customers can now run their Microsoft Windows Server applications within the AWS Free Usage Tier -- a programme designed to help new AWS customers get started in the cloud.

Developers and businesses with Windows Server applications can take advantage of 750 hours of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Micro Instance usage per month, at no charge for a one year period, says the company in a release.

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With the expansion of the AWS Free Usage Tier, Windows developers now have access to the same free resources on AWS as Linux developers.

"Our customers want the flexibility to choose how they build their applications without being locked into a particular programming model, language, or operating system. We continue to focus on increasing that flexibility," said Peter De Santis, general manager, Amazon EC2. "Through our continued work with Microsoft, Windows developers now have an opportunity to see, at no cost, how they can leverage Amazon Web Services' scalable and cost-effective computing environment."

The AWS Free Usage Tier addition joins a number of recent AWS service extensions to support Windows customers, including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 on the high power Cluster Compute instances, Microsoft SQL 2012 beta preview on AWS, Microsoft BizSpark Licenses on AWS, and support for Microsoft Windows HPC clusters using Amazon EC2 instances.