Azure Billing To Start in February
Microsoft announced its plans for moving from the Windows Azure previews to commercialization today. Commercial billing of the Azure platform will start February 1, 2010.
New Windows Azure Platform features will be announced at PDC next month, according to a Windows Azure Launch Update posting by Microsoft found on numerous Azure-related blogs. Developers will have CTP access to those new features and the Windows Azure platform –- Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services –- through December 31st.
In January, Microsoft will require new customers to sign up for the Azure Platform to receive access to services and roughly 1 month of $0 billing to determine usage patterns.
According to the Microsoft posting today announcing the roadmap:
"Making the transition in these three steps accomplishes a few goals. First, it gives you a chance to explore our full feature set for free. Second, it allows our team time to get your feedback on the new features and address any issues that arise. Finally, it lets you preview exactly how billing will work before you need to start paying."
Ok, sounds reasonable. But we've been told repeatedly that Azure would be "commercially available" at PDC.
We also noticed the ongoing issues related to the former Azure Services Platform, as it went from .NET Services, SQL Data Services (now SQL Azure), Live Services, SharePoint Services and CRM Dynamic Services – to two at launch, revamped .NET Services and SQL Azure, a relational database service first previewed in August. Microsoft was first to announce a native relational database in the cloud, but Amazon is now competing in that market with its MySQL relational database offering,announced this week and made available in beta.
.NET Services originally consisted of a service bus to connect on-premises and cloud services, access control and workflow. Workflow was taken offline largely because developers requested that it be rebuilt using the same workflow engine found in WF 4. Don't expect to see workflow services again until sometime after the planned March release of VS2010 and .NET 4. In the October CTP, which Microsoft said closely mirrored the feature set at launch, the .NET Services team made numerous changes, refocused on REST and suspended support for WS*-protocols.
In other words, we kind of saw this coming. And to Microsoft's credit, the Azure teams did change course based on developer feedback in many instances. My November VSM cover story, "Re-architecting Azure," available online early next week, looks at Azure and its evolution since PDC 08.
What's your take on today's announcement? Express your thoughts on Microsoft's roadmap for the commercialization of Azure below
or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 10/29/2009 at 4:45 PM