Cloud Computing: Azure steps up its game with per-minute billing

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Nancy Gohring.

It took Microsoft a while to launch its Azure infrastructure-as-a-service offering, but I’m seeing signs that it’s one to watch among enterprise service providers. Today Microsoft announced it is now offering per-minute billing. Most providers charge by the hour, although Google Compute Engine recently also began offering per-minute billing. Amazon is still offering billing by the hour. I’ve asked the company if it wants to comment on Azure’s move and will update this post if I hear a response.

In a blog post, Microsoft noted that 65 minutes of use could cost more than double on a competitive cloud service, now that it’s offering per-minute billing. It’s literally the difference of only pennies but “multiply that by the thousands of virtual machines that you may ultimately run, [and] the difference adds up quickly,” Scott Woodgate and Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Windows Azure product marketing, wrote in the blog post. “Suddenly you may find your cloud economics are not what you thought they would be.”…

I’m getting the sense that Microsoft is pushing hard on its IaaS offering. I recently talked to Citrix about some of its new mobile offerings, including a new option for businesses to store files using Citrix ShareFile – its DropBox competitor – on Azure. Businesses had been able to use AWS but adding Azure gives customers an additional option, which could be useful based on data center locations of AWS and Azure…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/359181/azure-steps-its-game-minute-billing