Application Development: Microsoft and the Cloud: 5 Ways the Company Helps App Developers

Microsoft is making it easier for developers to start building applications for the cloud by providing a host of new programs and promotions that enable programmers to tap into the power of Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud platform. As part of its strategy, Microsoft is offering developers a new free trial of the Windows Azure platform, which is valid till June 30. This promotion, available as of Feb. 22, includes 750 hours of Windows Azure Extra Small Compute instance use, 25 hours of Small Compute instance, 500MB of storage, 10,000 storage transactions per month, 100,000 access-control transactions and two service bus connections. Microsoft also is providing users with a 1GB Web Edition of the SQL Azure Database (free for first 90 days), as well as free data transfers-500MB in and 500MB out per month, said Prashant Ketkar, director of product marketing for Windows Azure. Windows Azure compute instances come in five sizes to enable complex applications and workloads: extra-small, small, medium, large and extra-large, and they range in size from 20GB of storage for the extra-small instance to 2,040GB for the extra-large instance.