The New Pricing Model for SQL Azure Explained!

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The new pricing model is an amazing improvement over the original model. In 60 seconds here are the 2 major improvements you will notice:

#1 - New 100MB Option: Smaller databases has been a big ask. If you do not have a multi-tenant database tier, this may be the way to go given you can have many tenants. The story is told better with this picture. This is just going up to database capacity going up to 10GB. Look at that bottom left corner. that is the 0.1GB database.

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#2 - Granular Increments: The new model introduces 1GB Increments as opposed to the original jump points : 1-5-10-20-30-40-50-150…GB. The picture looks so different that I think it is easier to begin telling the story with the only that didn’t change: 1GB database capacity. That is still $9.99 but everything else simply improved for customers. Not only do we have granular increments but we no longer have business edition starting at 10GB. You can have a 100MB business edition database and still pay 4.99 a month instead of 99.99. All these sound fantastic to all of you but the engineering team is in tears – just like that VWJetta commercial. Just to help you appreciate the price difference, here is the full picture to show you savings all the way up to 150GB databases. We have saving over %78 for some of the segments.

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One important point to remember is; for this price, you are not only getting database storage for this price! Beyond just storage in database, the simplified price measurement on database-GBs in SQL Azure also include rich TSQL language with stored procedures for high performance query processing as well as transactional processing, the built in high availability and worry free physical administration you get with SQL Azure

 

For more information here are a few useful links;

Pricing Federations in SQL Azure: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2011/12/12/billing-model-for-federations-in-sql-azure-explained.aspx

Price Calculator: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/

Pricing Details: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/details/

Offers: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/purchase-options/

Pay by Invoice option: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/invoicing/

Thanks!