<p>Amazon Web Services Inc. yesterday announced AWS Marketplace support for Windows apps and big data solutions. AWS, of course, is the equivalent of Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud service, and the AWS Marketplace is akin to the Windows Store.</p><p>The latter last month got some buzz because a company called Distimo reported it offered more apps than the Mac store (of course, the Mac store is quite different from the iPad and iPhone stores). Only a couple months old, the Windows Store includes more than 20,000 apps. In case Windows 8 really take off, it appears Amazon is positioning itself for a piece of the pie.</p><p>"Windows users will now be able to find, deploy, and start using popular application infrastructure, development tools and business software in minutes," Amazon said in a news release.</p><p>Among the Windows Server offerings is the popular Toad data development tool from Quest Software. "Offering customers choice for their cloud infrastructure and enabling open development is a priority for us, which is why we're excited to provide our Toad solution for on-demand use across managed databases," said Quest executive Michael Sotnick in the news release. "We deliver value to the AWS ecosystem today through our freeware edition that enables more than 2 million developers to easily leverage Toad for Oracle, Toad for SQL Server and Toad for MySQL within the AWS cloud."</p><p><a href="http://visualstudiomagazine.com/blogs/data-driver/2012/12/amazon.aspx">Keep reading...</a></p>