The cloud computing space just became a little bit busier. Microsoft has announced pricing for Azure. Customers looking specifically to run Windows instances in the cloud now have a price comparison point against the Amazon Web Services offering. Notably, Microsoft’s hourly compute cost is $0.005 lower than Amazon’s–half a penny. It is also $0.02 more expensive than Amazon’s Linux cost. Microsoft does not, however, differentiate between standard and “high CPU” usage as Amazon does so that leaves open the question as to whether there’s no upper price band transition envisioned by Microsoft, or whether that will change over time.
CPU time prices are lower on Google App Engine, of course, but that’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, given that App Engine does not run an Operating System and allows the creation specifically of certain types of web applications. I won’t bore you with a further play-by-play price breakdown, which I’m sure will be thoroughly provided by analysts and commentators, and in many cases already has. I do think it’s worth noting that Azure is attempting to provide something quite different from AWS in one respect–a system ready made for running existing Microsoft applications as cloud services. Amazon offers more of a utility platform at its core with the ability to run applications as cloud services provided currently through more of a community model than as a core offering of the system provided directly by the Amazon team. I would suspect, then, that most of the direct competition will be over Windows applications and the applicability of Live Services to a potential project until such time as Azure branches out to Linux and non-.NET frameworks, if it follows that path and competes more broadly at the utility level.
One thing I didn’t see from Microsoft, which hopefully will be coming, is a price calculator for Azure. Cloud computing has been heavily embraced and championed in the startup community for lowering the barrier to entry for software and SaaS offerings and cost is a very important factor there. However, as cloud computing heads more towards the mainstream with providers–like your own GXS–providing cloud-style computing environments for specific business problems or vertical industries, the simple utility price comparison becomes much less relevant than the use case fit. In any case, I’m thrilled to see more competition on the scene.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have worked on AWS and Google App Engine as a developer and Azure as a partner.