Earlier this week, Amazon Web Services reduced its prices for its S3 cloud storage service and today, Microsoft is following suit with a price reduction for its own cloud storage services.
Locally redundant storage on Azure now matches Amazon’s prices and Azure Storage transactions are getting a 50 percent price cut, which matches Amazon’s latest price cuts. In addition, Microsoft’s Locally Redundant Disks/Page Blobs Storage is seeing a 28 percent price reduction.
Last April, Microsoft said it would match any AWS price drop, so today’s announcement isn’t surprising. Given that its new prices are effective worldwide, Microsoft argues, today’s price drop actually means that Azure storage will now be less expensive than AWS’s offerings in some regions.
In its announcement today, Microsoft also stressed that, while pricing is obviously important for its users, it also wants to offer “best in class reliability / scalability.” Specifically, the company argues that its redundant storage option means data will also be replicated in data centers that are at least 400 miles apart. Microsoft also argues that because its users get durable storage with their virtual machines at no extra charge – whereas AWS customers have to pay for storage space on EBS – its service can be significantly cheaper for customers who rely on this kind of storage for their apps.
Via: techcrunch
Leave a Reply