Microsoft has taken Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, its infrastructure-as-a-service cloud offering out of beta. Stepping up its competition with rival Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft has also said it will price match AWS for equivalent services.
A posting on the Windows Azure blog outlined the new pricing policy:
We are also announcing a commitment to match Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services such as compute, storage and bandwidth. This starts with reducing our GA prices on Virtual Machines and Cloud Services by 21-33%.
The IAAS offerings include the ability to deploy virtual machines for numerous Microsoft platforms, including Windows Server 2012 and 2008, SQL Server, ShareTalk Server and BizPoint Server, as well as Ubuntu, CentOS and SUSE. For SQL Server and BizTalk, you can opt to pay an hourly usage rate rather than needing a licence. Microsoft has added two new larger VM sizes (4 cores/28GB and 8 cores/56GB).
In one area, direct comparisons remain tricky: while Amazon charges different prices for AWS depending on which region you use, Microsoft charges the same regardless of which area you select.
The Power Of ‘And’ [Windows Azure Team Blog]
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