{"id":3911,"date":"2011-02-23T02:37:14","date_gmt":"2011-02-23T01:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/3911-what-will-it-take-to-get-developers-to-try-windows-azure-microsoft-improves-its-trial-offer.html"},"modified":"2011-02-23T02:37:14","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T01:37:14","slug":"what-will-it-take-to-get-developers-to-try-windows-azure-microsoft-improves-its-trial-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/3911-what-will-it-take-to-get-developers-to-try-windows-azure-microsoft-improves-its-trial-offer.html","title":{"rendered":"What will it take to get developers to try Windows Azure? Microsoft improves its trial offer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft has <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/windowsazure\/archive\/2011\/02\/21\/announcing-new-windows-azure-platform-introductory-special-includes-750-free-hours-of-windows-azure-extra-small-instance-and-more.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> an improved <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/windowsazure\/free-trial\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">introductory trial<\/a> for Windows Azure. You can now get:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>750 hours of an Extra Small Compute Instance<\/li>\n<li>25 hours of a Small Compute Instance<\/li>\n<li>500MB storage<\/li>\n<li>10,000 storage transactions<\/li>\n<li>500MB in \/ 500MB out data transfer<\/li>\n<li>1G Web Edition SQL Azure database<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The offer lasts until the end of June, after which you will be charged at standard rates. The allowances are I believe per month \u2013 note that 750 hours is approximately the number of hours in a month so you can run an extra small instance continuously. This is the main change from the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/b\/windowsazure\/archive\/2010\/11\/03\/windows-azure-platform-introductory-special-extended-to-march-31-2011.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">previous trial<\/a>, which only offered 25 hours of a small compute instance.<\/p>\n<p>You cannot sign up without handing over credit card details.<\/p>\n<p>Further, some of these limits are not really generous. This blog, for example, would chew through those data transfer limits in no time.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft is also less generous than Amazon, which offers a <a href=\"http:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/free\/\" target=\"_blank\">year of free usage<\/a> with data transfer of 15GB in and 15GB out per month. Google App Engine is free up to 1GB or persistent storage and <a href=\"http:\/\/code.google.com\/appengine\/kb\/billing.html#freequota\" target=\"_blank\">about 5 million pages views a month<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>I guess Microsoft needs to figure out whether it wants to target mainly enterprise and large-scale applications, or to offer a commodity platform to a broader market. I doubt this offer is aimed at enterprises. After all, serious commercial developers on Microsoft\u2019s platform have MSDN subscriptions, which with premium and ultimate subscriptions <a href=\"http:\/\/msdn.microsoft.com\/en-gb\/subscriptions\/ee461076.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">already offer<\/a> inclusive Azure time that is better than this: 7GB in and 14 GB out per month, for example. Startups on the BizSpark scheme also get this allowance.<\/p>\n<p>This offer is for the rest of us then. It is certainly getting easier to try Azure, but is this enough to encourage experimentation? I suspect Microsoft may need to come even closer to what is offered by the competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Microsoft has announced an improved introductory trial for Windows Azure. You can now get: 750 hours of an Extra Small Compute Instance 25 hours of a Small Compute Instance 500MB storage 10,000 storage transactions 500MB in \/ 500MB out data transfer 1G Web Edition SQL Azure database The offer lasts until the end of June, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/3911-what-will-it-take-to-get-developers-to-try-windows-azure-microsoft-improves-its-trial-offer.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What will it take to get developers to try Windows Azure? Microsoft improves its trial offer<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,19,26,67],"tags":[137,185,267,422,586],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-azure","category-cloud-computing","category-development","category-professional","tag-amazon","tag-azure","tag-cloud-computing","tag-google","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}