Windows Azure Announces infrastructure services public release and new price commitments

Today is an exciting day for Microsoft, Windows Azure, and all Microsoft customers in the world. It is a great pleasure to announce to you that Windows Azure infrastructure services are publicly published. This new service makes it possible for customers to migrate applications to the cloud.

Today's announcement is a key step in our cloud computing strategy, which is directly facilitated by our discussions with customers and partners around the world. Throughout these dialogues, each discussion revolves around a centre in which companies know that cloud success depends on the power of convergence. Customers do not want to eliminate and replace their current infrastructure to gain the benefits of the cloud, and they would prefer to combine the existing investments and the flexibility of the cloud with internal deployments. They do not want to make a choice between infrastructure as a service (IaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS), but rather a hybrid scenario with infrastructure services and platform services. The cloud should be a catalyst for innovation and an extension of the organization's IT infrastructure, not just a flashy description of Low-cost infrastructure and application hosting.

Customers also admit to us that they don't want to choose between a low price or a high performance, but they want both. This is why we are announcing today that we are also ensuring that commodity services, such as computing, storage, and bandwidth, are comparable to Amazon's WEB services prices. We reduced the price of virtual machines and cloud services by 21% to 33% in public. No matter how you choose to buy Windows Azure, you will benefit from this reduction. As our operations general manager Steven Martin said, "If you ever feared that Windows Azure would become more expensive, then today we will address your concerns." ”

By listening to customer feedback, we learned more about the workloads that the customer wants to run. In the newly released infrastructure services, we have added high-end storage VM instances (28GB/4 core and GB/8 kernel) to run the most demanding workloads. We also have an in-depth understanding of the applications that you want to run, and for this we have incorporated a variety of Microsoft validated instances into our list, including SQL Server, SharePoint, BizTalk Server, and Dynamics NAV, among others.

Thankfully, customers have used our unique hybrid solution to innovate. Car marketing and social media company Digital Air Strike, for example, leverages Windows Azure's infrastructure services and platform services to create an instant feedback mechanism for auto industry giant General Motors for all car purchases and service transactions. This allows GM to closely monitor the situation of its customer relationships in real time and provide in-depth, valuable business insights.

The CMO of Digital Air Strike recently told us that they had learned about Amazon Web services and other cloud providers, but eventually found that "if you want to serve the enterprise, you must choose Microsoft." We are honored to have such an assessment. This has also confirmed our determination to continue to lead the company: We provide not only a world-class cloud platform, but also decades of experience and unparalleled support services – businesses are part of our DNA. We'll never say that a Microsoft application in your virtual machine is obsolete and unsupported-we will always support products that will ensure your success. In addition, we will provide support with the industry's highest monthly SLA.

I also recently visited another customer, Norwegian telecoms company Telenor. They want to upgrade to the latest SharePoint solution in 13 business departments and 12 countries. If you use traditional methods that will exceed their time limit and budget, they have chosen Windows Azure to support their SharePoint 2013 farm operations, shortening deployment time from 3 months to two weeks. This not only shortens the time, but also saves 70% of the cost of the test environment. In production, they will migrate their final production deployments to existing Third-party hosting providers with VM portability provided between Windows Azure and Windows Server. The short time to market is unbelievable and does not appear to be locked by the vendor.

Windows Azure has more than 200,000 customers, and the number is still growing, and Telenor's wonderful story is one example. More and more customers are revealing to us that they think our hybrid cloud approach can provide the flexibility to develop and deploy applications in accordance with business needs. We want to make sure that customers are ready for the future with the existing technology and the internal deployment infrastructure and the Windows Azure infrastructure, where they already exist.

We also recognize that customers have the right to choose, so we are meeting all the needs of our customers in as simple a way as possible – providing strong support with a complete hybrid cloud platform while eliminating price barriers. Immediately go to the windowsazure.com register for a free trial to experience the power of "fusion". Also visit Scott Guthrie's blog to gain insight into infrastructure services.