New Windows Azure Pricing Reduces Costs of Storage, Compute

The Windows Azure team has announced additional savings to compute and storage customers. In addition to the SQL storage reductions announced last month, the new plan offers an Extra Small Compute at 2 cents per hour.

With these changes, a 24x7 Extra Small Compute instance with a 100MB SQL Azure DB costs less than $20 per month. The price of compute and storage continues to be consistent across all datacenters.

Pay-As-You-Go customers will automatically see the reduced prices reflected (as of March 8) on their next bill. No action required.

Here are the details:

• Windows Azure Storage Pay-As-You-Go pricing has been reduced by 12% ($0.14 to $0.125)
• 6 Month Plans for Windows Azure Storage have been reduced across all tiers by up to 14%
• Windows Azure Extra Small Compute has been reduced by 50% ($.04 to .$02)

For the announcement, see Announcing Reduced Pricing on Windows Azure Storage and Compute.

Calculate Windows Azure Pricing

See Azure Pricing Overview for pricing details and to figure out your own costs, see the Windows Azure pricing calculator.

The announcement follows the February announcement of significant price reductions for Windows Azure and a new entry level database option to meet customer needs on both ends of the database spectrum.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation