Microsoft announces Azure pricing, details

Microsoft's Bob Muglia announces Microsoft's Windows Azure plans at last year's professional developer conference. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced how it will charge for the service and what level of guarantees it will provide.

(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News)

Microsoft on Tuesday announced how much it will charge companies that want to use its Windows Azure cloud computing service when it is released in final form this fall.

The software maker announced a variety of plans, including one that charges purely on consumption and another that offers discounted rates for those that agree to a six-month commitment.

With the launch of Azure, Microsoft finds itself in a new type of business, where it competes with the likes of Amazon.com's Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com's Force.com.

The cloud operating system isn't launching in final form until Microsoft's November Professional Developer Conference, but a top executive had told CNET News that the pricing announcement would be made at this week's Worldwide Partner Conference, which is taking place in New Orleans. Microsoft first announced its Azure plans at last year's PDC and the product has been available as a free technology preview form since then.

On a pure consumption basis, Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. For network bandwidth, the software maker is charging between 10 cents and 15 cents per gigabyte.

The discount plan, dubbed the "development accelerator" comes in two forms and offers a 15 percent to 30 percent discount off the consumption charges. It requires a six-month commitment, with overage charges billed at the regular rates. After six months, the pricing reverts to the standard Azure rates.

Microsoft also announced pricing for its SQL Azure database, charging $9.99 for the basic Web edition, including up to a 1GB relational database and $99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database.

The software maker said it would promise 99.95 percent reliability for its compute and connectivity and 99.9 percent for role instance and storage. Ultimately, though, Ray Ozzie has said that trust will play a big role in which company businesses are willing to choose to host their applications.

Correction: An earlier version of this post stated the incorrect time for the Professional Developer Conference. It will take place November 17 to 19 in Los Angeles.

[Norseman]

Unless you are an IT professional and/or computer science grad, I'm betting you don't have a clue what Azure is and what it can do. Ozzie's explanation doesn't help. It's just a bunch of buzz words strung together. Microsoft needs to get a LOT better at explaining their products in a way non-geeks can understand.

[admoore]

Unless you are an IT professional or a computer science grad, you probably have no need for Azure.

[Norseman]

How about the non-IT CEOs and CFOs that make the decision whether to use it or not???

[jessiethe3rd]

CEOs and CFOs will look to their CTOs and CIOs to explain this and trust me - they all can at this point in time. The concept is not difficult and the implications are great for Microsoft's ISV and partner community who rank in the thousands. End customers from a corporate perspective may get it but it'll take some time. I think the key here is that Microsoft is running its own software on the cloud which is a good step forward in itself.

[superman227]

My guess - online storage

[kenharwood]

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can charge for many of the features that are free in other environments. I am wondering why Google wants to start over when in fact an online version of Sun's OpenOffice running on all browsers could challenge MS right away. I am very worried about the size of the Office products for an online conversion.

[KTLA_knew]

<i>online version of Sun's OpenOffice running on all browsers could challenge MS right away.</i>

Coffee...meet keyboard.

[andrew_kandzuba]

Google Docs will be smashed for sure due to issues with formats. Now Google have to inverst into resolution of this issue or withdraw.

[liquidmetalband]

It's sooo much cheaper and easier to just store things on your own computer. Plus, you always have a connection.

[cosuna]

Look mom.... I can just share my hard drive with the whole company and now we have no need for Google Docs.

No son... that's not Google Docs, that's called Disaster Engineering.

Moral: Cloud Computing is about sharing stuff without killing your company in the process. Some companies tried to share normal apps using Citrix and Terminal Services, just to find out that sharing whole desktops is ridiculous, when you only need to share the data.

Microsoft has done an unpleasant job with Azure, even on the naming side. First they were called SQL Server Data Services, then SQL Data Services, then SQL Services, finally SQL Azure. The difference, SQL Server Data Services was pure REST, infinite scalability. Now SQL Azure is T-SQL and TDS based. One table lock, and you're fried in tens of thousands of servers.

Conclusion. Microsoft has a long way to go in order to both convince old developers to adopt Azure and have new functionality that best serve the Cloud computing premise.

Tough luck. Seems like Vista Cloud version has just appeared in the sky.

[freemarket--2008]

Yawn...

[Renegade Knight]

Looks like a shift to the 100% rental plan.

[wintran]

I think the OS name is very confusing and a bad naming convention on Microsoft. In reality, it acts more like a redundant ISP than an OS. A much better name would have been Windows Cloud (aka Windows Skynet).

I was at the last PDC, and I think Windows Azure is great stuff for Web developers. It is geared towards Enterprise environment that want to host there stuff up in the cloud with redundant (50+ computers clusters farm). You could be using Windows Azure in the future without knowing it because it could host your application. It eliminates the expensive and cost of hosting and maintaining your own network. It is much more expensive to hire a network administrator to run a network then use Windows Azure if you were to develop a Web base application.

I was waiting for the pricing to see if it was worth the time to look into developing anything for the Windows Azure.

[mooreoftom]

Ray Ozzie looks like he is ecstatic about this product!

[zeroplane]

I applaud Micro$oft for getting into the web-services/Cloud Computing arena if not a few years late. That being said this area of the industry is relatively new so they may make a mark on it. Unfortunately from the tests my peers and co-workers have conducted just with the new server operating system, I can only assume the Azure platform will have poor performance and require more expensive hardware resources as compared to it's open source rivals. The hardware and licensing costs along (I am talking the server licenses for windows 2008 server and MS SQL 2008) and the heavy handed hardware required to run an enterprise size application really make it hard to compete against Amazon's cloud service.

But that cost would be on the ISP and or Microsoft right? We as consumers of the platform would only need to worry about our "client" servers that host our system interfaces to the cloud data/media right?

Using virtualization of clients for the cloud computer framework can be costly as well. I have spent a great deal of time testing different server platforms as client servers and based on the different operating systems provided at for example slicehost.com, and you get a better performance on a the save virtual hardware with a linux-based OS verses a windows OS.. (again before the peanut gallery starts in, this is just my observations and opinion so take it with a grain of salt.)

So even if you use Micro$oft's cloud service or Amazon's (or heck both at the same time) system architects will still need to make a decision on the OS and hardware for their "client" servers.

[FF2009]

I gave up when I read Azure pricing details. lol

Why should I pay when I get Google ChromeOS cloud for FREE? and besides, I trust Google to handle my private data more than M$.

[JasonCe]

You obviously have no idea what cloud computing or ChromeOS is.

Go spread your "M$" (very original, btw) hatred somewhere else. Try Slashdot, it is where zealots like you rule.

[jessiethe3rd]

You have no idea what you are talking about FF2009.. another worthless comment in a sea of ignorancy that is the general end user community. For the ill-informed - Windows Azure is a platform akin to Windows Server that one can develop and host applications on.

As far as Google being FREE - that remains to be seen - your privacy is your payment and your information to marketers is Google's gain. Trusting Google (a company that makes its revenue on selling your information) is not exactly smart. At least with a company who makes its revenue off selling software I know that's where there interest is - delivering software and services.

[Vegaman_Dan]

@FounderingForever2009:

If you cannot or will not spell Microsoft correctly, then what sort of respect to you really expect to get for your comments? Leave the childish antics behind and discuss things in an adult and respectful manner.

[jtjt145]

... as long as it comes from Micro$oft we don't want to hear about it! BASTA FINI !!

Micro$oft stick to what you do best: MAKE KEYBOARDS AND MICE!

[eadeguzman]

jtjt145 -- well, the title of the article reads "Microsoft announces..."

You don't want to hear anything about it, yet you keep on reading about Microsoft? You love Microsoft, you just don't realize it yet... ;-)

[michaelcizmar]

Isn't the news the pricing not that they announced it? What is the overall pricing? "I am announcing that someone else is announcing something. So...Google it yourself to find the actual annoucement."

[jessiethe3rd]

hehe or Bing it :) Move along - as usual empty reporting by CNET and it's staff.

[Roman1024A]

Quote from article:
" ... Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. ... charging $9.99 for the basic Web edition, including up to a 1GB relational database and $99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database ..."

15 cents per gigabyte. $9.99 for basic Web Edition, $99.99 for Business Edition. Is this one-time fee or per month/year/century? Sigh.

[jessiethe3rd]

I would guess / venture to say it's charged annually.

Just doing a bit of an analysis:

Cost of hardware + Cost of power + Cost of Software (which may be moot if you are an open source customer in general)

I think this is Amazon's pricing:
Storage
$0.150 per GB ? first 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.140 per GB ? next 50 TB / month of storage used
$0.130 per GB ? next 400 TB /month of storage used
$0.120 per GB ? storage used / month over 500 TB

[aazippo2]

Oh wow, most interesting indeed!

RT
www.privacy.cz.tc

[gggg sssss]

I still think the cloud is a disaster waiting to happen, but I would trust Microsoft before salesforce for sure, amazon in most cases, and google the least before salesforce to store anything of value.

[t8]

Mobile computing will drive Cloud Computing.
Hard drives and PC boxes will be like 80s brick cell phones one day.

[BIGELLOW]

I find it fascinating that Microsoft usually ends up being third. Not first. Not second. Third. Perhaps once they see the first, they begin designing... and by the time they are ready for release, someone else jumps in with their offering. In any case, it seems to be a good strategy. Maybe the idea is... let someone else waste an investment on something which might flop... if you see them succeed AND see someone else copy them and succeed as well, then a new market is forming... it's time to jump in with your "me too" as quickly as possible, then dominate.

[t8]

Nice observation.

Microsoft gets the bronze.

At least it is a medal I suppose.

[t8]

I like the first 2 words under the picture. "Microsoft's Bob".
Thought that they were launching and old favourite for a minute.

[qi-fense]

A primary rationale for letting users deploy to Azure in advance of the commercial launch at PDC 2009 is to let development organizations figure out the best deployment and monetization models to maximize Azure commercial opportunities.

This begs the question ? how does a developer gauge feature usage, adoption patterns and resource requirements inside the Azure cloud? If a developer was also testing VS2010 Beta 1, he/she would have access to the feature and session monitoring capabilities included in VS2010. Microsoft announced this at PDC 2008. http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-27PreEmptivePR.mspx

For those that want to take one step at a time, PreEmptive Solutions announced Azure support for its application feature and usage monitoring. This is the commercial version of what they provided to Microsoft inside Visual Studio 2010 mentioned above. Now, any .NET component deployed into Azure can be injected (post-build) with session, feature and method level monitoring. The Runtime Intelligence is streamed out of Azure for analysis. Other than writing a custom solution, this is perhaps the only means to measure adoption, usage patterns and performance inside Azure in near real-time.
http://www.preemptive.com/preemptive-solutions-announces-immediate-support-for-application-monitoring-and-management-inside-the-microsoft-azure-services-platform.html

Interested in learning more about Runtime Intelligence? PreEmptive also announced a training competency program too. http://www.preemptive.com/preemptive-solutions-announces-successful-launch-of-application-instrumentation-and-injection-training-program.html