The IT Melting Pot!

As I use to write; THIS IS INTERESTING! I think that Microsoft will take some market share for sure with their cloud service offerings!

Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Network now are generally available. We have new prices for Virtual Machines, Virtual Network, and Cloud Services.

Today is a major milestone for Windows Azure and all of our customers and partners. We are excited to announce that Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Windows Azure Virtual Network now are generally available. We also want to update you on new prices for Virtual Machines, Virtual Network, and Cloud Services.

Virtual Machines and Virtual Network help you meet changing business needs by providing on-demand, scalable infrastructure. These infrastructure services enable you to extend your data centers and workloads into the cloud while using your existing skills and investments. With these services, you can:

• Provision Microsoft SharePoint farms in minutes without up-front hardware investments. Integrate full-trust code to run rich apps and provide Internet-facing collaboration sites.
• Prototype your newest app or extend data marts into the cloud using Virtual Machines as a robust infrastructure for Microsoft SQL Server software. Scale on demand and connect to your on-premises infrastructure using Virtual Network.
• Embrace rapid innovation using the cloud for development and test scenarios. You can spin up any test lab or sandbox quickly, and be agile in your learning, development, and prototyping.

Let’s take a closer look at the news that we are announcing today with general availability.

New high-memory instances for Virtual Machines

When your apps need more memory, new 28-gigabyte (GB) and 56-GB instances deliver.

Updated SLA

When you deploy multiple instances of Virtual Machines, Microsoft provides a financially backed 99.95 percent monthly service level agreement (SLA).

Customer support

Our customer support team is ready and available to help you troubleshoot 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have several support plans tailored to meet your needs—from basic developer support to Premier Support. When you work with Microsoft, you have a single vendor to call for cloud and on-premises needs. 

Validated workloads

The best of Microsoft server products are validated to run on Virtual Machines, including Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013, SharePoint Server 2013, BizTalk Server 2013, and more. We also offer prebuilt virtual machine images—such as BizTalk Server and SQL Server—through the Windows Azure Virtual Machines Image Gallery with hourly pricing. Prebuilt Linux images—such as CentOS, Ubuntu, and Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)—are available in the Image Gallery from commercial distributors. In addition, a wide variety of the most popular open source applications are available as prebuilt images in VM Depot, a self-service community portal. Read more…