Microsoft this week announced general availability
of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services. The Infrastructure as a
Service offering previously had been in limited release.The cloud service lets users deploy full virtual machines created
from a gallery of pre-populated templates built into its management
portal. Users also have the option of uploading and running their own
custom images.The built-in image gallery of VM templates includes Windows Server
2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server, BizTalk Server and SharePoint
Server. However, it includes Linux images as well -- Ubuntu, CentOS and
SUSE Linux distributions.
Microsoft sent a direct shot across Amazon's bow by offering to match its prices for commodity compute, storage and bandwidth services. What this means in practical terms is that Microsoft will start reducing its general availability prices on virtual machines and cloud services by 21-33 percent.
This is telling, not only because it illustrates Microsoft is ready to take on Amazon Web Services, but also because it amounts to an acknowledgment that the desktop era is on its way out, and cloud services are in.
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