Amazon has made another move to further cement its position as the leader of the cloud, giving Microsoft developers the option to integrate Windows server-based apps within Amazon Web Services.

Amazon made the announcement late last week, with support being offered for Windows Server versions 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012. The AWS Marketplace currently offers around 20 big data apps at present, but with the new announcement we can expect that to change in the not too distant future.

The move is just the latest twist in a battle for cloud supremacy that Amazon looks to be winning, despite some stiff competition from the likes of Google and Microsoft. Just recently, all three reduced their storage prices as the intensity of their competition turned up a notch. Now, Amazon is attempting to get one over Microsoft by luring its developers over to AWS.

The strategy seems to be a smart one, considering the large number of developers Microsoft has. In addition, should Windows 8 eventually prove to be a success, Amazon would almost certainly be able to reap something from that. It’s also worth remembering that Amazon doesn’t make software, and so it needs to be as compatible as it possibly can in order to remain a viable cloud computing option.

At present, Amazon is rather light on big data apps although it does have a few stars to choose from, including MongoDB, which is seen by some as one of the biggest rivals to Hadoop; Couchbase Server and SAP Hana. We’re looking forward to seeing plenty more following this announcement, given that AWS’s infrastructure is ideal for big data crunching given its vast size.

Even more interesting perhaps, will be how soon it takes for developers to bring their products to AWS. We’re expecting it to happen sooner rather than later, simply because AWS s far too powerful and tempting for developers to ignore.