Price Reductions for Virtual Machines and Cloud Services
One of our influencers in Montreal Alexandre Brisebois, wrote this article on Tuesday. With his permission we are re-publishing it here, without any changes. Merci Alexandre! -M
Today Microsoft announced a 33% price reduction for Cloud Services web and worker roles.
Based on the following announcements (copied directly from the announcement email), I have recalculated the yearly costs for hosting Cloud Services with 33% discounted prices and compared the new prices with Amazons’ new prices. Furthermore, I recalculated the yearly pricing for Virtual Machines with the 21% discounted prices in order to compare with Amazons’ new prices.
Tremendous business growth globally gives us the ability to pass along benefits of scale to you, and provide competitive pricing across all geographies. We’re offering the following new prices and added value:
• Windows Virtual Machines general availability prices reduced by 21% for standard instances. New general availability prices will be effective June 1, 2013. For a small instance, the new price will be $0.095 per hour. Windows Virtual Machines will remain at discounted preview prices until May 31 for standard instances.
• Linux Virtual Machines prices reduced by 25 percent for standard instances. Effective April 16, 2013, prices reduced by 25 percent for small, medium, large, and extra-large instances. For example, the price for a Linux small instance will drop from $0.08 per hour to $0.06 per hour in all geographies.
• Virtual Network pricing of $0.05 per hour effective June 1, 2013. Until June 1, customers can use Virtual Network free of charge.
• Cloud Services web and worker role prices reduced by 33 percent for standard instances. Effective April 16, 2013, price drops by 33 percent for small, medium, large, and extra-large instances. For example, the price for a small worker role will drop from $0.13 per hour to $0.08 per hour in all geographies.
• Increased value of 90-day free trial, MSDN and Microsoft Partner Network offers. These offers now include additional 50 hours of usage per month of our new high-memory instances. This special offer ends June 1, 2013.
New Yearly Costs for Windows Azure Cloud Services Web and Worker Roles
Using the Pay As You Go Rates*
| VM Size | Windows Azure | Amazon Web Services | Difference |
| Small | $700.80 / yr | $797.16 / yr | $96.36 |
| Medium | $1401.60 / yr | $1594.32 / yr | $192.72 |
| Large | $2803.20 / yr | $3188.64 / yr | $385.44 |
| XL | $5606.40 / yr | $6377.28 / yr | $770.88 |
For reference purposes, here is the new hourly pricing
Small = $0.08 / hr — (1.6GHz CPU, 1.75GB RAM, 225GB Storage)
Medium = $0.16 / hr — (2 x 1.6GHz CPU, 3.5GB RAM, 490GB Storage)
Large = $0.032 / hr — (4 x 1.6GHz CPU, 7GB RAM, 1,000GB Storage)
Extra Large = $0.64 / hr — (8 x 1.6GHz CPU, 14GB RAM, 2,040GB Storage)
New Yearly Costs for Windows Azure Virtual Machines
Using the Pay As You Go Rates*
VM Size Windows Azure Amazon Web Services Difference Small $832.2 / yr $797.16 / yr $35.04 Medium $1664.4 / yr $1594.32 / yr $70.08 Large $3320.04 / yr $3188.64 / yr $131.40 XL $6640.08 / yr $6377.28 / yr $262.80 Its important to note that changing your Purchase Plan to a committed 6 or 12 month plan will greatly affect your overall monthly operational costs.
The Pay as You Go plan offers flexibility with no upfront costs and no long term commitment. The six and twelve month plans offer up to 29.5% savings. Want to save even more? Pre-pay your 6 or 12 month plan for an additional 2.5% savings. Sign up for the FREE 90-Day Windows Azure Trial and take your organization to the cloud today.