Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : Microsoft Azure Announcement and Pricing

[pnorilsk]

Microsoft announced about availability and pricing of Azure platform, see URL:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/

[Dave - Just199]

The overcomplicated nature of their pricing structure will be their downfall.

[pnorilsk]

SQL Azure is actually quite simple:

$9.99 per database, per month for <1GB
$99.99 per database, per month for <10GB

IMHO, quite reasonable price.

[Dave - Just199]

I was looking at compute time for a project and it got very complicated very quick.

[NoSupportLinuxHostin]

It will be interesting to see which types of applications actually take off in that platform. The price model is far too complicated for standard web hosting services. I doubt anybody will be interested in trying to host a normal website in Azure.

There could be business applications that use the Azure platform as the server side component of their custom applications. For example, maybe a custom accounting or sales leads package. If the custom app needed to be used from several worldwide offices and have a centralized server component, it might cost less to host the server side of something like that in a cloud like Azure. A business would take into account the hardware and software costs as well as the ongoing operational costs of running it themselves. Azure might compete well in those cases.

[network82]

Azure is still in early days yet, but it won't be long before they roll out server offerings (likely Windows to start with) and do away with the need for Datacentres all together when you can just virtualise your Infrastructure from Microsoft and provision your services anywhere in the world on their cloud.

They are already doing it with their BPOS Service.
http://www.microsoft.com/online/busi...ductivity.mspx

So its only a matter of time before they do servers too, and Partner with the top ISPs/Hosts to resell and support the Microsoft Infrastructure and product base.

[peterlouis]

While it seems complex on the surface, their pricing model isn't really that different from the ways that Google and Amazon are offering their offerings.

You pay for what you use. You get what you pay for. Many shared/vps services you purchase struggle to deliver what you purchased (eg unlimited bandwidth)...

[(Stephen)]

Originally Posted by network82

Azure is still in early days yet, but it won't be long before they roll out server offerings (likely Windows to start with) and do away with the need for Datacentres all together when you can just virtualise your Infrastructure from Microsoft and provision your services anywhere in the world on their cloud.

They are already doing it with their BPOS Service.
http://www.microsoft.com/online/busi...ductivity.mspx

So its only a matter of time before they do servers too, and Partner with the top ISPs/Hosts to resell and support the Microsoft Infrastructure and product base.

Ms has datacenters, there is NO CLOUD computing 'doing away with datacenters' in fact they are only growing!

[seoliving]

Well,It is really very good information for all visitors. Once they have visit once, then they have get more information about it.