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Developers of Windows Phone and Windows Store apps now have an alternative to Azure and can host their applications in Amazon's cloud.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has extended its Microsoft toolset with an update to its .NET SDK that now supports Windows Store, WinRT, and Windows Phone 8 applications, offering .NET developers similar options to the already-available SDKs for iOS and Android in AWS.

Amazon's updated .NET SDK, which is still in developer preview, allows developers to connect their apps to AWS services like S3, EC2 and others as well as select the AWS region the SDK calls to.

Support for Microsoft's new operating systems are two feature updates of version 2 of the SDK, which include new commands to request AWS resources when targeting Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 or .NET 4.5.

The SDK adds to several recent updates from Amazon aimed at luring Windows workloads to its cloud, including AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, AWS Visual Studio toolkit, and new guidance for running Exchange Server in AWS.

The update comes as Microsoft squares up against AWS to attract mobile developers to Azure. Late last month Microsoft moved Azure Mobile Services into general availability after being in preview for the past year. Initially only available for Windows 8 apps, Microsoft later bolstered the service with support for Windows Phone, iOS and Android.