All is new in December

Ah – where to start?

We have created a whole new developer experience for Windows Azure. From Signup, over SDK support up until Billing, our systems have received a full refresh. At the same time, we’ve also adjusted down some of our pricing.

All the details can be found here: blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/12/12/improved-developer-experience-interoperability-and-scalability-on-windows-azure.aspx

However, I’d like to highlight a few things:

  • Take a look at the maximum database size increase (tripled) and the pricing cap we’ve put in. That makes SQL Azure extremely competitive for larger databases
  • For anyone starting to develop on Windows Azure, the signup process is now very slick and streamlined, paired with a default “0$” pricing cap for risk free evaluation
  • Our tooling for non-Microsoft Technologies has received a nice bump, including, but not limited to:
    • MongoDB
    • Java
    • Node.js
    • Hadoop
    • memcached

Best take a look for yourselves and tell me what you think!