News

Microsoft Announces Another Round of Azure Price Cuts

• By Kurt Mackie
• September 26, 2014

Microsoft reduced the prices of about 61 Azure cloud services on Thursday.

The price cuts apply to organizations that order those services through Microsoft's Web site, according to Microsoft's announcement, which added that Azure customers with Enterprise Agreements will see even lower prices.

The new price reductions are listed here. While the price cuts are billed by Microsoft as being in effect now, the list page states that the prices will go down on Oct. 1, 2014.

Azure prices are supposed to decrease as Microsoft expands its datacenter capacity and its customer base in a commodification kind of strategy. Another motivation for price cuts is competition with Amazon Web Services, which prompted Microsoft to scale back Azure prices in April.

In August, a GigaOM story noted that Microsoft had quietly ended discounts for new Azure customers that ranged from 20 percent to 32 percent, based on commitments of six months or 12 months. The discounts apparently ended after July 16, but no notice or explanation was given by Microsoft, according to GigaOM.

Microsoft now offers Open licensing for its Azure services, an option that started in August, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, via e-mail.