Microsoft’s Azure Gets A Business Model And An Official Release Date

Via TechCrunch:

Microsoft says that Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will try to continue to offer promotional discounts to enterprise customers. Pricing for Azure’s OS is $0.12 cents an hour for computing and $0.15 cents per Gigabyte per month for storage. SQL Azure will offer a basic $9.99 per month plan and a $99.99 business edition, which has a database capacity of up to ten gigabytes.

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Microsoft SQL Services Is Now Microsoft SQL Azure, More Software + Services News Next Week At WPC09

Via LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews:

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. From now on SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Data Services will be called Microsoft Azure Database:

This name change doesn’t reflect a change in the products themselves; we will still be providing a powerful relational database foundation to the Azure Services Platform. By standardizing our naming conventions, we’re demonstrating the tight integration between the components of the services platform. More intuitive names also help to reinforce the relationships between our on-premises and cloud solutions. Ultimately, the goal is to drive simplicity and clarity for customers as they consider on-premises and cloud computing approaches for solving their IT needs.

More news and updates related to Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy will be announced next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Long Zheng has been digging in deeper as to what might be announced next monday: Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure. What also might be announced is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, Long received some information that confirms this one. Can’t wait!

We’ll keep our eyes open, that’s for sure!

Meffifying Windows Azure

Via CodeBetter.Com - Stuff you need to Code Better!:

Magnus has been off doing some interesting work around integrating MEF with Windows Azure. The first question you might be asking is Why?

In his words, he set out to build a template for Windows Azure templates that:

• enables testability
• abstracts away storage
• is extensible and easy to evolve during development

In the post he shows how to take the RoleManger and expose it through MEF, thereby making it pluggable. He then creates a mock Role Manager for use in his unit tests, thus removing the dependency on all the Azure infrastructure.

I am guessing this is the first of many posts to come on MEF and Azure.

For more, check out Magnus post here.

 

Open source to shape cloud computing, but not dominate it

Via CNET News.com:

Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady writes a bleak, but likely accurate, eulogy for open source's relevance to cloud computing. In a world where horsepower matters more than the software feeding those "horses," in terms of the entry cost to compete, and where big vendors like Amazon and Google are already divvying up the market, the odds of a small-fry, open-source start-up challenging "Goliath" are slim.

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The Cloud as a Platform for Platforms

Via Amazon Web Services Blog:

Of the many things I love about AWS, I will mention three of my favorites in this blog post:

• AWS does not force developers to use any particular programming model, language, or operating system.
• AWS does not force developers to use the entire suite of services - they can use any of our infrastructure services individually or in any combination.
• AWS does not limit developers to a pre-set amount of storage, bandwidth, or computing resources they can consume - they can use as much or as little as they wish, and only pay for what they use.

Our customers love this flexibility. Today, a developer can run more experiments and achieve results much faster than before. If something does not work in a particular environment, the developer can drop that idea, click a few buttons, dispose all of his infrastructure and move on to the next experiment; starting with a fresh, new environment. Developers can try out several new ideas simultaneously by running multiple projects concurrently. Once the ideas are implemented, they can be further battle-tested using more resources in the AWS cloud until they become finished products. Developers love this because they are able to convert their concept/idea into a successful finished product quickly. As a result, we are seeing tremendous innovation happening at break-neck speed. The Cloud is becoming a platform for Innovation. 

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