In what will arguably be one of the biggest product launches in its history, Microsoft will begin rolling out the Azure cloud computing platform in November. Delivered from datacentres located in the US, Dublin and Singapore, Azure is seen by many as opening up a new chapter in the software giant’s continuing battle with Google.

Azure, which was the main focus of attention at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this week, aims to offer businesses an inexpensive, massively scalable cloud-based platform. In essence, Azure lets firms develop .Net-based applications that run on a Microsoft-hosted cloud environment. The concept can be considered as using a near-infinite capacity Windows Server located on the internet.

According to Microsoft, an Azure-based system would require no hardware management, offers three subscription-based licensing models, and comes with service-level guarantees for online processing power and storage space.

Microsoft UK developer and platform evangelism director Mark Taylor said there are many definitions of cloud computing, but the most relevant for Azure is “the revolutionary one of monetisation”.

He said one of the challenges for corporates in moving to the cloud is allowing data out of their “safe havens”.

“Where Microsoft is coming from is providing choice –­ with Azure you can work inside the cloud or behind your firewall,” he said.

Azure has three components: Windows Azure is the compute function providing raw processing power; SQL Azure is the database component; and it is all glued together with Azure .Net services. “The .Net part is the core of the Azure offering,” said Taylor.
There will be three purchasing options for the service: pay as you go; a subscription that gives discounts if firms make a specific commitment over time; and a volume licensing model similar to that used for Microsoft’s enterprise software packages.

The pricing for Azure services comprises a service charge and fees for storage and data inbound or outbound from the cloud-based application. A standard Windows Azure compute unit will be $0.12 (7p) per hour, with storage charges of $0.15 per month, and 10,000 transactions costing $0.01.

SQL Azure will be available in Web and Business Editions. The Web Edition uses a 1GB database charged at $9.99 per month, while the Business Edition employs a 10GB database charged at $99.99 per month.

For the .Net services package, the charges for service bus messages will be $0.15 per 100,000, and there will be a charge of $0.10 per gigabyte of inbound data and $0.15 per gigabyte outbound.

Azure services will also come with service-level agreements (SLA) for each component. For instance, the compute function comes with an SLA whereby if uptime is less than 99.95 per cent over a month, customers will be given 10 per cent credit.

For storage availability, if the uptime is less than 99.9 per cent, again a 10 per cent credit will be given. There will be an “all services” SLA that gives a 25 per cent credit if uptime is less than 99 per cent.

Usage metering software will also be available to manage Azure cloud services.
“We will provide something similar to our System Center Configuration Manager package, but targeted at metering and monitoring Azure,” said a Microsoft spokesman. “We’re working to create a cohesive and consistent interface, but we’ll also expose the application programming interfaces [APIs], allowing you to use management tools from other vendors.”

Datamonitor principal analyst Vuk Trifkovic said Azure services are most likely to appeal to users already familiar with the Microsoft ecosystem. But they could also appeal to customers not using Microsoft products, especially as the pricing sounds comparable to Amazon’s cloud offering.

“The story now is Microsoft moving onto Google’s territory. Rather than see this as a checkmate move from Microsoft, I’d see this as another long-term strategy move,” said Trifkovic.

Another important consideration for firms looking at Azure is interoperability with other types of cloud or hosted services.

“We’re totally committed to interoperability, and potentially you could have an application front-ended on Google’s app engine, with storage running on Azure ­ to the user the service would appear seamless,” said Microsoft’s spokesman.

But Gartner managing vice president Daryl Plummer said using services created by different suppliers and ensuring they will work both separately and together will be a complicated task.

“It is rife with data integration issues, integrity problems and the need for relationship management,” he said.

EasyJet explains why Azure is on its radar

Budget airline EasyJet is one of the early adopters of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.

EasyJet enterprise architect Bert Craven said EasyJet runs a 100 per cent Microsoft technology stack and has no internal R&D budget – but the web is central to its business.

“Some 98.5 per cent of our passengers book via EasyJet.com, which serves between 85 and 220 pages per second,” he said. “Primarily, and in the short term, what we’re looking at is using the Azure services bus [part of Azure .Net services].”

Azure offers a solution to a question EasyJet had already been asking, said Craven. “How do we make our on-premises services available publicly but securely, and in a rich and flexible way?” he said.

Craven said that over time EasyJet would be looking at using a much broader range of services on Azure.

“I can definitely see us making use of the Windows Azure compute component, for serving up things such as data feeds,” he said.

EasyJet would also like to feed-enable EasyJet.com, so that external developers writing mashups, iPhone applications and other web-based software could access EasyJet’s flight availability data.

“We don’t want the current situation where ‘data scrapers’ serve up that data because it affects users on EasyJet.com,” said Craven.

In later iterations of EasyJet’s new departure control system (DCS) Halo, Craven said that the airline might consider moving more of its back-end data into an SQL Azure cloud database.

“At the moment, we’re still keeping a very centralised DCS and just exposing that publicly. Once we’re happy that the overall process in the airport works, we’ll look at that,” said Craven.

“If you look at our network of airports – they are all over Europe with the information stored in UK databases. It would make much more sense for that data to reside in the cloud, and be modified in the cloud.”