Amazon makes further overtures to Microsoft developers

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pushing harder to attract Windows developers.  The company has launched two new managed services aimed specifically at Microsoft techies.

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Microsoft SQL Server is a new facility that allows users to scale their Microsoft databases into the cloud. Amazon claims that this will greatly reduce deployment time by allowing developers to use familiar Microsoft tools. Amazon RDS already supports SQL Server 2008 R2 and AWS looks to add support for SQL Server 2012 later this year.

AWS is offering developers a free trial to assess the new service. New customers will be able to get up and running through a Free Usage Tier, which includes 750 hours per month of Amazon RDS micro instances with SQL Server Express Edition, 20GB of database storage and 10 million I/O requests per month.

The company has also introduced ASP.NET support for AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The new product means that .Net developers will be able to automatically load ASP.NET applications in the AWS cloud – this means that developers will have to make minimal changes to the underlying code, with all AWS costs being charged on a pay-as-you basis.

According to Amazon, the new offerings will make it easier to deploy databases. "Amazon RDS now supports three of the most popular relational database engines, giving businesses the flexibility to launch a managed Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL database based on the needs of their application. With Amazon RDS, customers no longer have to become experts in database set-up and management and can shift their focus to building and improving the capabilities of their applications,” said Charlie Bell, AWS vice president

“We’re excited to give Windows and ASP.Net developers new options for taking advantage of AWS to quickly deploy and easily manage their databases and applications in the cloud,” he added.