Thursday, October 23, 2008

Amazon Launches EC2 For Windows

Seattle-based Amazon Web Services, the web services subsidiary of Amazon.com, said today that it is launching a new product based on Microsoft Windows Server. The firm said the new web services product launches today in a public beta, and gives its users access to Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. According to Amazon, the new support came as a result of common requests from its AWS customers. Previously, Amazon EC2 customers had to develop their applications using the Linux operating system. The new service will be priced at $0.125 per compute hour. Amazon's EC2 services allow developers to tap into a web-based, "cloud" of virtual computing resources, and is heavily used to scale out Web 2.0 and Internet applications. Among the first customers of the Windows offering are Eli Lilly, Autodesk, and RenderRocket. Amazon also said that it is releasing its EC2 service into general availability.