Microsoft Reveals Windows Azure Ship Date, Pricing Plan

Microsoft's says its cloud operating system will be coming in the second half of '09.

By John Fontana
Fri, October 31, 2008

Network World — Microsoft's Windows Azure operating system and the online platform it anchors will ship in the second half of 2009, and its pricing will be based a set of usage metrics, according to the company's newly posted Azure Web site.

Buried on the site is the cloud operating system's "availability time frame," which is listed as the second half of 2009. Microsoft further explains that Azure will be available directly through the Microsoft Online Customer Portal and through independent software vendors when users purchase an ISV application that uses the Azure Services Platform. Users that go through an ISV will pay based on that ISV's licensing and pricing model.

On the same Web site, Microsoft reiterates that Azure will be free during its Community Technology Preview cycle but once it is available for commercial use, users will be billed based on the amount of resources they consume. Microsoft will break down consumption based on platform services and on specific utilization measurements.

According to the site: CPU time will be measured in CPU hours; bandwidth for ingress/egress from the Microsoft data center will be measured in gigbytes, as will storage usage; and transactions will be measured as requests like Gets and Puts.

Platform usage measurements will break down by sections: Windows Azure will be billed based on compute and storage services; .Net Services on access control, service bus and/or workflow services; SQL Services on database services for line-of-business applications; and SharePoint, which won't be in the initial Azure rollout, will be charged based on components developers use and build into their applications.

In addition, Dell announced that it would exclusively provide the hardware that would run the Azure cloud operating system. Dell will provide a highly customized version of its rack-mounted data center hardware.

You are here: Technology Topics » Operating Systems » News

Most Recent Windows Stories

White Papers »

Microsoft Volume Licensing Comparison - Small/Med. Business

This quick-reference document lets small and medium organizations (i.e. those with five or more devices) to easily compare the available Microsoft Volume Licensing programs to create a simple, cost-effective and flexible way to benefit from volume licensing.

Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Program Overview

Discover how flexible the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement Program is to help you build the right software solution agreement for your business. This paper highlights all the available options-from on-premise software and cloud service solutions, to payment options and enrollment programs, and more.

Microsoft Volume Licensing Comparison - Enterprise

With this quick-reference document, you can easily compare the available Microsoft Volume Licensing programs for enterprise organizations with 250+ devices, and tailor a program to help save costs, manage multiple licenses, and keep software up-to-date.

Microsoft Open Value Program Guide

In this overview, see how Microsoft Open Value provides a flexible, affordable way for small to midsize organizations (i.e. those with five or more desktop PCs) to use and manage all their Microsoft licensed products under a single agreement.

Microsoft Volume Licensing Reference Guide

This guide provides an overview of the key features of Microsoft Volume Licensing programs. The information is presented by organizational type and size-two of the most important keys to determining your best Volume Licensing option.

Watson - A System Designed for Answers. The future of workload optimized systems design

Watson is a workload optimized system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and DeepQA technology. Read the white paper about Watson's workload optimized system design.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter