Microsoft's
Azure, its public cloud-based developer platform, will soon offer developers one
less geographical region from which to run their applications. Azure relies on a
worldwide network of distributed data centers to deliver SAAS (software as a
service) to users.
"Due to a change in local tax laws, we’ve decided to migrate
Windows Azure applications out of our northwest data center prior to our
commercial launch this November," announced an Aug. 4 posting on the official Windows Azure
blog. "This means that all applications and storage accounts in the 'USA –
Northwest' region will need to move to another region in the next few months, or
they will be deleted."
The posting added: "Around the time that the 'USA –
Northwest' option is removed, we will also provide an automated tool available
on the Windows Azure portal to migrate projects." An e-mail will be sent to CTP
participants when the tool becomes available on that as-yet-unannounced
date.
In addition to "USA – Northwest," Azure offers "USA –
Southwest" and "USA – Anywhere" as geographies from which users can run Azure
applications. Microsoft plans on adding further geographies at an undetermined
time in the future.
Microsoft announced at its Worldwide Partner Conference in
July that Azure
would be available for free until this year’s Professional Developers Conference
in November. After that point, customers will have three different options
for paying for the service: a pay-as-you-go model, a subscription format or via
volume licensing.
For all three types of service, users will pay 10 cents per
gigabyte for incoming data, and 15 cents for outgoing data. The "consumption"
model will cost 12 cents per hour for infrastructure usage, and another 15 cents
per gigabyte for storage. The business edition of the SQL Azure database will
cost $99.99.
Microsoft’s initial price cuts are designed to build market
momentum for the platform, which will face competition from similar cloud-based
offerings by Amazon.com and Google. Doug Hauger, general manager of Microsoft
Azure, told an audience at the Worldwide Partner Conference that Microsoft would
offer discounts for partners, as well as allow partners to charge customers for
applications and services built using the platform.
Azure will allow developers to "deliver solutions very, very
quickly," Hauger added at the time.
Azure and other cloud-based services still face structural
issues, such as unexpected downtime, but analysts also feel that their presence
could ease many IT professionals’ reservations about running parts of their
operations in a public cloud.
Microsoft has no plans to make Azure available to run in an
enterprise’s private cloud. Even so, some
of Azure’s functionality, including the ability to boot from a VHD (virtual hard
disk) has been integrated into Windows Server 2008.
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