In an important milestone for Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) cloud, Blue Blue Windows and SQL have become generally available in 21 countries this week, allowing organizations to launch its Windows Azure and the Azure production SQL applications and services with the full support of Service Level Agreements.
According to a blog post on Windows Azure business and marketing general manager Doug Hauger, thousands of customers have moved from Community Technology Preview of production since January 2010, and now partners may begin selling its solutions to its customers, helping them reach new markets and increase revenue.
This new development will help partners, including startup and Microsoft BizSpark One partner Lokad (www.lokad.com), which uses the Windows Azure platform to provide business forecasts as a service. “Lokad had developed a new set of statistical models that provide highly accurate forecasts,” said Hauger. “But Lokad quickly realized that the complex models require 10 times more processing power than previous iterations, and could not maintain its previous targets for delivery time forecasting. Lokad forecasting service moved to the Windows Azure platform for take advantage of scalable processing power. Now they have the ability to deliver 100 times more Windows Azure estimates of what could be up to 100 million previously forecast an hour. ”
Probably in response to Microsoft’s cloud announcement this week, Amazon (aws.amazon.com) announced price cuts in its Amazon Web Services.
The price for Windows Azure cases will begin in a landmark $ 0.12 per compute hour, a price that is subject to change, as promotion, Microsoft is offering six-month subscription to $ 59.95 per month , which includes 750 hours of computing time Azure, 10 GB of storage, and a million storage operations, along with 7 GB Data Transfer 14 GB input and output data.
According to a report SearchCloudComputing.com, Microsoft is expected to add Remote Desktop and Virtual Machine support the end of next month.
