Yes, you can directly mine using Awesome Miner.  It has a lot of the most recent mining applications built in like the various flavors of Claymore, EWBF, CCMiner, Excavator, sgminer and more.  It will also allow you to add in your own custom mining software if needed.  You can also monitor and control some "external" miners, which are applications or rigs that are not directly controlled by Awesome Miner... like if you have an ASIC miner or a linux based miner.