I feel like this is one of the few times where I've seen capitalism work clearly and unambiguously along the lines that Adam Smith had in mind. I'm deriving something approaching mischievous glee.
Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#32I am a Microsoft fan, but they are doing the cloud all wrong. To setup Azure, you have to use silverlight. To access the servers, you use remote desktop. Microsoft office 365 is $100 PER YEAR - much more than I would pay for the full suite (over 4years of average use) If you want to use SQL server, expect to pay $$$ - and integration or reporting services are not included. There is another feature that is actually ni…
They changed the portal a whole back and silverlight is no longer used. I hated it too. New one is very nice.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#33I am a Microsoft fan, but they are doing the cloud all wrong. To setup Azure, you have to use silverlight. To access the servers, you use remote desktop. Microsoft office 365 is $100 PER YEAR - much more than I would pay for the full suite (over 4years of average use) If you want to use SQL server, expect to pay $$$ - and integration or reporting services are not included. There is another feature that is actually ni…
Some of this just flat out isn't true... I access my Azure instances with SSH just like I did on AWS. No Remote Desktop.
Also the management portal hasn't required Silverlight for at least a year now, it's all HTML5.
And if you don't want to use the portal then there's command line tools for both Node and Powershell.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#34I am a Microsoft fan, but they are doing the cloud all wrong. To setup Azure, you have to use silverlight. To access the servers, you use remote desktop. Microsoft office 365 is $100 PER YEAR - much more than I would pay for the full suite (over 4years of average use) If you want to use SQL server, expect to pay $$$ - and integration or reporting services are not included. There is another feature that is actually ni…
This comment is all wrong actually.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can you imagine a world where consumer broadband had the same level of competition? Sigh...a nerd can dream... Yes, in most European countries. :)
Well that's disappointing then. I wasn't particularly impressed with the service I got at my various hosts' homes in the UK. Is it really the case that the last mile physical infrastructure is considered common there so any provider can use it?
Yes - the UK telephone network is regulated, and any provider can supply services over the formerly-public BT network. ADSL2+ is available up to ~20Mbps; there's also BT's Infinity, which I think is FTTC with VDSL - that's up to about 70Mbps.
Virgin Media has a private cable network, which is great if you're not in an oversubscribed area - bandwidth up to 152Mbps is available for low cost.
In general the situation is pretty good, with a pretty wide variety of options.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#36Yeahhh, if Rackspace would just go ahead and follow AWS,Google and Microsoft, that would be grreat...
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#37I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't drastically reduce the price of their Windows instances. Microsoft is matching all of AWS prices, which means the Windows servers are more expensive than the Linux servers. Why not set your Windows server prices as the same as your Linux servers since you don't have to pay the licensing to yourself. This would make azure the easy choice for those running Windows servers. Maybe…
They do have to pay licensing, its money that goes from one business unit to another within the Microsoft Corp, thus to not destroy the Azure budget, they pass the license costs to you instead of eating it.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#38Very nice! I think Azure's biggest hurdle so far is the association with Microsoft and people assuming "well it must be expensive" only to be proven right when they sign up. That being said, some parts of Azure are pretty cheap and for small site it's affordable as it is now. You can get 10 free websites and a couple decent sized databases for around $40 a month which gives you better service and scalability than you…
The biggest unexpected fee I found in my comparison shopping was the $39 / month fee to support IP address SSL on Azure Websites.
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also with Bizspark you can have, if I remember well, like 150E/month to spend on azure for 3 years. Considering that almost any IT startup can access to bizspark, it is a nice thing to at least try it. Also I love the fact they are distributing their sdks for other os (linux and osx) and that they are all opensource on github
It's also worth pointing out that BizSpark imposes no requirements or obligations on the startup. You are free to join BizSpark and never use any of its services and you don't owe MS anything at all.
They got rid of the $100 thing?
Re: Microsoft Azure: Cutting prices on compute and storage
#40I really wish they would have included some price cuts on the web site services.. Or at least give us an extra small instance for standard web sites. Scott Hanselman said it was "coming soon" back in August: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PennyPinchingInTheCloudWhenDoA...