14 DAY TRIAL // On January 4th, Microsoft’s Cloud platform graduated from Community Technology Preview phase to a subscription based offering. Although Microsoft continued not to charge customers for Windows Azure for the month of January 2010, as of today, February 1st, users leveraging the Cloud OS will have to pay for all Windows Azure platform services. There is, however, a very interesting exception to this rule, and one which will ultimately benefit developers. The Redmond company has a special offering lined up for MSDN subscribers. According to the software giant, MSDN Premium subscriptions come as of January 4th, with a promotional offer, namely a monthly amount of Windows Azure Platform services that are made available in addition to the benefits already delivered to subscribers.
Specifically, MSDN Premium subscribers get to use Windows Azure for a total of 8 months completely for free. It is clear that Microsoft is trying to get developers to warm up to its Cloud platform. And fact is that the offering would otherwise cost devs approximately $1038 for 8 months of usage. However, per the information offered by the company, BizSpark subscribers can also take advantage of the special deal.
“Starting January 4, 2010, subscribers in many countries will benefit from compute hours, storage, data transfers, SQL Azure databases and Windows Azure platform AppFabric messages included at no extra charge as part of their subscription. The Windows Azure platform offers a simple, comprehensive, and powerful platform for the creation of web applications and services,” Microsoft informed.
Availability is limited only by the actual availability of Windows Azure, which is only offered to customers in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. The promise from Microsoft is that Windows Azure will be opened to more markets in 2010.
“This introductory offer will last for 8 months from the time you sign up. After that, you'll cancel your introductory account and sign up for the ongoing MSDN benefit based on your subscription level. The easiest way to cancel your introductory account is to set it to not "auto-renew",” the company noted.
Developers will be getting 750 compute hours per month, 10 GB of storage, and 1 million transactions per month via Windows Azure, 1 million service bus messages per month in AppFabric, 3 web edition (1GB) SQL Azure databases, and 7 GB in / 14 GB out data Transfers per month for Europe and North America, and 2.5 GB in / 5 GB out for Asia.
“You'll need your credit card to sign up. If you use more than the amount of services included at no additional charge with your MSDN Subscription, we'll bill your card for these overages (which for subscribers are 5% off the standard rates—you can review this discounted overage rate plan by clicking on your country on this page). You can visit the Windows Azure platform site to look up your usage at any time,” Microsoft added.
