Azure Costs No Longer Cloudy
If you're a developer or true IT buff, good news: Azure is free for now. Of course, it's only in beta so that's pretty normal. Once it emerges into a full commercial set of tools this fall, it's going to cost you.
Unlike most packaged software, Azure is more like a service where you "pay as you go." Existing customers can earn discounts, and those building apps can get the stuff even cheaper.
Azure, aimed now at high-end service providers and ultra-demanding Web users, comes in at 15 cents a gigabyte for storage per month, and 12 cents an hour for computing. Microsoft will also charge for every gigabyte that moves in or out of its server farms.
Posted by Doug Barney on July 15, 2009