Just over the past few weeks we've seen a lot of news about how cloud competitors are joining hands, offering each other's apps and services within their own cloud environments. For example, Microsoft has announced several new ready-made offerings where apps like Java and Oracle database can run in Windows Azure as a service. Where once you expected fisticuffs, steady, seemingly genuine, handshakes are becoming more common. That's good, I guess, unless you like to see a little teeth-gritting competition.
Amazon Support for Windows Phone and Windows Store Apps
In that light, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is becoming friendlier and friendlier with Microsoft, and, in doing so, is steadily building a strong case against Windows Azure. Amazon has just announced support for Windows Phone and Windows Store applications in the next version of their SDK. What this means, is that applications can be developed for Windows and Windows Phone that utilize AWS as the backend.
This announcement comes after recently providing guidance for running SQL Server, SharePoint, and Exchange in the AWS cloud. And, earlier this year, Amazon announced a Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager that allows System Center admins to monitor various AWS resources for health and stability.
Amazon is one of those companies that tend to get things right. I don't care what they decide to do, it turns out to be stellar. From the online ordering experience, to streaming movies and TV shows, there's very little complaint about how they do things, including AWS.
AWS Development Providing Access To Windows-Based Devices
In a blog post, Tom Rizzo, General Manager, Amazon EC2 Team, outlines the announcement and includes some additional pieces that are planned.
Read it here: AWS SDK Support for Windows Phone and Windows Store Applications
Obviously, there's quite a bit of development going on at AWS around providing access to Windows-based devices. It'll be interesting to watch the "friendly" competition unfold.
