Amazon Web Services has launched Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server in its EU Region, allowing customers to access Windows-based compute resources for Europe and running on the AWS cloud. The AWS Management Console will provide support for Amazon EC2 in the EU enabling developers to manage their Amazon EC2 resources in the EU Region with a point-and-click web interface. Launched in August of 2006, Amazon EC2 is the AWS service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud for businesses and developers.

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows allows for the deployment of applications using the Microsoft Web Platform, including ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight, and Internet Information Server (IIS). Amazon EC2 also supports the SQL Server Express and SQL Server Standard databases. With these announcements, Amazon EC2 running Windows is now joining Linux/Unix-based Amazon EC2 environments, the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and Amazon CloudFront in the EU Region.

Amazon also announced that the AWS Management Console now supports the Amazon EC2 EU Region, allowing developers to start and stop Amazon EC2 instances, view and perform actions on running instances, and manage Amazon Elastic Block Store volumes with simple clicks of a mouse. The AWS Management Console provides a global picture of a developer's cloud computing environment, giving them a tool for managing their AWS cloud-based assets.