Available for testing

Mar 10, 2010 14:14 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is gearing up for the moment when it starts billing customers that leverage the Windows Azure platform AppFabric. In this regard, the Redmond company has introduced a testing release of the billing system designed to allow customers to get familiar with the costs they will incur as the use Windows Azure platform AppFabric and the software giant’s way of calculating the bill. The Billing Preview for Windows Azure platform AppFabric is currently live and Microsoft invites customers to test drive it, as actual billing will start soon enough, in April 2010.

“In order to help prepare you for the onset of billing, we are releasing the AppFabric Billing Preview. To use this billing preview, at any time you may visit the AppFabric Developer Portal and download a daily AppFabric usage summary, which will have information similar to that currently available for Windows Azure and SQL Azure. The report will summarize your usage of AppFabric starting today. The Billing Preview will be available until you start seeing actual billing charges in April. We hope you find the billing preview useful in understanding how you will be charged when actual billing starts,” a member of the Windows Azure platform AppFabric team stated.

Microsoft has already published billing information for all components of its Cloud operating system, including Windows Azure, SQL Azure and AppFabric. It is important to note, that as per Windows Azure’s pricing model, customers pay only for the resources they actually use. According to Microsoft, the billing system has been adapted to the Cloud platform in a manner which streamlines scalability.

The AppFabric consumption rates are as follows: Access Control transactions = $1.99/100K; Service Bus connections $3.99 per connection on a “pay-as-you-go” basis; $9.95 for a pack of 5 connections; $49.75 for a pack of 25 connections; $199 for a pack of 100 connections; $995 for a pack of 500 connections and Data transfers = $0.10 in / $0.15 out / GB - ($0.30 in / $0.45 out / GB in Asia). The promise from Microsoft is that customers will see absolutely no charge for inbound data transfers which happen during off-peak times until June 30, 2010.

Testing AppFabric continues to be free for the time being. The Redmond company has scheduled actual billing to kick off next month, in April.