Azure Pricing, Release Date Announced

Pricing for the Windows Azure platform for cloud-hosted applications (formerly called the Azure Services Platform) was announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in July 2009. The published rates, promotional offers, and service level commitments should help organizations decide whether to develop on Microsoft’s cloud computing offering and more accurately compare the Azure Platform with competing solutions from Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.com. The Azure Platform will become commercially available in mid-Nov. 2009, timed to coincide with Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference. However, this release will not include all the capabilities included in the Azure Community Technology Preview (CTP).

(For Azure pricing, see the chart “Windows Azure Platform Price Rates“.)

Time-Sharing Pricing Returns

The Windows Azure platform allows organizations to host applications and store data on Microsoft platforms in Microsoft’s datacenters, and organizations are charged for computer resources used. Azure and similar online services offered by providers such as Amazon, Google, and Salesforce.com, could help developers create scalable applications with guaranteed availability at lower cost than they can with on-premise or traditional hosted solutions. They can reduce IT costs by cutting software deployment and maintenance activities while allowing developers to focus on implementing application business logic rather than on designing and provisioning the server infrastructure necessary to support their applications.