At the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles Tuesday, the company announced that its Windows Azure service, unveiled in October last year, will be formally launched to customers on Jan. 1 next year.
“There is no question the cloud is the next generation application model and Microsoft will take you there,” stated Robert Muglia, president of the company's server and tool business.
Since October 2008, the service has been made available as a free Community Technology Preview to developers, allowing them to test and explore the capabilities of the platform.
The service will be offered free-of-cost throughout January, and charges will start accumulating February onwards.
Windows Azure will come in different sizes of virtual machines, costing $0.12 per hour for computing. Storage will cost $0.15 per GB, and $0.01 will be charged per 10K for storage transactions.
Functionality of Windows Azure
Windows Azure, a cloud services operating system, provides developers on-demand computing and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the Internet through Microsoft datacenters.
A lot of manufactures and retailers are dealing with their customers through Web. Azure will help them build these systems to efficiently deal with their customers, without bothering about server maintenance throughout the year.
Azure will help users reduce cost of IT management, build cloud applications, adjust quickly to changing business and customer needs etc.
"What this cloud computing allows IT departments to do, is to just buy computing as you need it," said Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect. "If you have an application that you'd like to run and just try it a little, you only end up paying a little, and if your demand gets greater and greater, then we just turn up the dial and we give you more and more.”
Online community reacts on the forums
Many readers online are discussing the latest cloud computing service being offered by Microsoft. Majority of the readers have welcomed the latest initiative by the software giant.
A reader named RighteousSoutherner commented on cnet, “That's a good one! I have to admit it being a Microsoft fan.”
Another reader named Neil Mackenzie posted his view on Microsoft support forum, “I'm equally impressed. It seems the Azure team has been working pretty hard."
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