The Azure™ Services Platform business model is aligned around four basic principles. These are:
- Consumption-based model
- Pricing attractive with the market
- Market expansion opportunity for Microsoft partners
- Easy access through the Web, or through existing channels and programs
With a business model based on these principles, customers will have the power of choice with the Azure Services Platform. You may choose to pay upfront for your usage, or opt to post-pay, or even decide to reserve capacity.
The Azure Services Platform can help open new markets and expands business opportunities for Microsoft partners. It can help fuel innovation in enterprises that choose to extend their business to the cloud, and it helps provide a cost-effective way to do so by using an Opex (operational expenditure) model rather than a Capex (capital expenditure) model.
The Azure Services Platform may also stimulate Web companies that want to get started quickly but have limited sources of capital. Start-ups can take advantage the extensive .NET ecosystem to build applications and scale them as their business grows without having to invest in infrastructure ahead of demand.
Microsoft will be developing a marketplace for developers to promote, distribute and monetize their own independent services as well as applications they have built using Microsoft® services. Students and hobbyists will be able to experiment with Microsoft technology without having to deploy anything locally.
During Community Technology Preview (CTP), services included in the Azure Services Platform will be available without charge - subject to certain limits. Once the Azure services are launched for commercial use, they will be priced and licensed through a consumption-based model. This model will be familiar to companies that have used other software-as-a-service or Internet-based (cloud) services offerings. We will be using feedback from the CTP, to help develop a business model to best meet the needs of our customers and partners.
Cost Advantages of Consumption-Based Pricing. In contrast to traditional on-premises software licensing models, where companies pay for software licenses based on forecasted need, companies using Azure services pay for what they actually use. You can increase or decrease usage depending on your business requirements. This plan offers significant benefits in business flexibility and cost savings compared with the traditional model.
With the Azure Services Platform, you don’t need to pay to maintain unused capacity just to satisfy peak loads. And because Microsoft gains economies of scale in its global data centers, our hardware and operational costs per server can be a fraction of the equivalent on-premises expenses, which helps keep our service prices low.
How Consumption Is Measured. When you rely on the Azure Services Platform to support your applications, you pay for the computing resources that your applications use. Monitoring agents in the Azure platform measure resource utilization to determine your charges. These resources include:
- Compute time, measured in machine hours
- Bandwidth requirements (transmissions to and from the Azure data center), measured in GB
- Storage, measured in GB
- Transactions, measured as application requests such as Gets and Puts
Predictable IT Expenses. The Azure Services Platform includes tools that let you monitor your use of the system and give you the flexibility to extend or limit that utilization. As your company tracks this information over time, you will be able to develop reliable, predictive IT cost models.
Flexibility to Fit Your Company's Needs. It’s easy to get started with Azure. With just a few clicks on the Azure Web site, you’ll be ready to start running the service. For larger customers that have higher usage volumes, Azure will be available through volume licensing programs that complement or extend your existing Microsoft enterprise licensing agreements. Regardless of your company’s size or IT needs, Azure will be designed to be flexible so that you can integrate it into any IT strategy.
Comprehensive Package of Services. Each service within the Azure Services Platform delivers functionality that supports a particular technical purpose or workload. Developers have access to any or all of these services—which can be used independently or in combination with other services—for building their applications and services. To learn more, see the overview of Azure services.
