Last week was the Google week as the company announced the Chrome OS, and the fact that all Google Apps are now out of beta among other interesting stuff. This week is Microsoft’s week as Bing is growing very much, the company will offer Office for free for use on the Internet, and now the Windows Azure prices were unveiled.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service that will become available for companies in October after the Profession Developer Conference. The company announced Windows Azure for cloud computing last year, however, the final version will be unveiled at the Microsoft PDC in October. Microsoft will charge companies based on consumption, but it will also offer discounts if businesses will sign a six-month contract.
Microsoft will charge companies with 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per GB for storage, 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions, and between 10 to 15 cents per GB for network bandwidth. The discount contract called development accelerator will require a 6-month agreement, and it will consists of discounts between 15% to 30% for the consumption pricing. After the six-month commitment is over, Microsoft will charge companies for Azure at standard prices.
The software developer will offer the SQL Azure database for the right price: $10 for the basic web edition which consists of 1GB of database, and $100 for the business edition which consists of 10GB of database.
The company has also announced the reliability of the Windows Azure, and Microsoft is promising 99.95% reliability for computing and connectivity, and 99.9% reliability for storage.
We already know that cloud computing is a success, but will Microsoft Azure be successful? Cloud computing is the future, and it will be interesting to see how it evolves. If you are in charge of a company, let us know if you are going to use the Microsoft Windows Azure.
via CNET
