Windows Azure will hit the market in the second half of 2009. The news was advanced by Microsoft, which also indicated that the price of the operating system will not be fixed, but will depend on some usage metrics, namely the resources consumed by the user.
According to the information available on the operating system website, the CPU consumption time will be measured in hours, access to the data center Microsoft will be measured in gigabytes, just as it is done using data storage, and transfers will be measured by requests.
The company explains on the software that the operating system based on cloud computing will be made available via the Microsoft Online Costumer Portal as well as through software if the customer purchases an ISV application that uses the Azure Services Platform.
On the same website, the manufacturer insists that Azure will be free during the Community Technology Preview period, but that as soon as the product enters the commercial phase it intends to divide consumption based on service platforms and specific uses.
With regard to measures for recording consumption in the use of the platform online, Microsoft says it will split into sections. In this way, the charge will be made based on computing and storage services, .Net services on access control and workflow, SQL Services in databases will be charged for applications for each line of business and SharePoint, which will not be included in the initial version of Azure but will be charged based on components used by programmers and embedded in applications.
