Microsoft on Thursday announced it has slashed prices of a range of Azure services, with new prices to be effective from October 1.
According to Microsoft’s announcement, a total of 61 Azure services including ExpressRoute NSP private-networking service, BizTalk Services (standard), Mobile Service (standard) and basic cache will be made available at reduced prices starting October 1. However, it is to be noted that only those customers who order these services directly through the company’s official website will qualify for the reduced rates.
Customers with Enterprise Agreements “will continue to enjoy even lower prices,” Microsoft’s blog post noted.
It seems with the latest price cuts, Microsoft is trying to match up with Amazon’s commodity cloud services prices.
Explaining the reason behind the latest price cuts, a Microsoft spokesperson said “As we committed over a year ago, Microsoft remains committed to matching AWS list prices on compute, storage and bandwidth.”
However, according to Microsoft, “The price drops on select Microsoft Azure services (announced on September 25) were not a direct competitive move, but were implemented to make these services even more accessible and economical for a broader range of customers”.
In related news, Microsoft recently announced a new series of virtual machine (VM) sizes for Azure Virtual Machines and Web/Worker roles. The new D-Series aims to expand VM sizing options for organizations using Microsoft Azure cloud services.
The D-Series offers eight virtual machine options based on cores, memory and storage. Virtual core options range from 1 to 16 cores. Memory options range from 3.5GB to 112GB. Local SSD storage options range from 50GB to 800GB.
