Microsoft Offering Developers Free Trial on Windows Azure Cloud

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Microsoft is

making it easier for developers to start building applications for the cloud by

providing a new offer that enables developers to tap into the power of

Microsoft’s Windows Azure

cloud platform.

As part of its

strategy, Microsoft is offering developers a free trial of the Windows

Azure platform, which is valid till June 30, 2011. This promotion, available as

of Feb. 22, includes 750 hours of Windows Azure Extra Small Compute instance

use, 25 hours of Small Compute instance, 500MB of storage, 10,000 storage transactions

per month, 100,000 access control transactions and two service bus connections.

Microsoft also is providing users with a 1GB Web Edition of the SQL Azure

Database (free for the first 90-days), as well as free data transfers — 500MB in

and 500MB out per month, said Prashant Ketkar, director of product marketing

for Windows Azure.

Windows Azure

compute instances come in five sizes to enable complex applications and

workloads: extra small, small, medium, large and extra large, and they range in

size from 20GB of storage for the extra small instance to 2,040GB for the extra

large instance. Microsoft introduced the extra small Windows Azure instance to

make the process of development, testing and trial easier for enterprise

developers. The extra small instance will also make Windows Azure more

affordable for developers interested in running smaller applications on the platform,

the company said.

For more, read the eWeek article: Microsoft Simplifies Development on Windows Azure Cloud.

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