2017 Azure Pricing Update: VMs, Compute & Storage

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Microsoft Azure offers companies the chance to save considerably on cloud storage costs. But what about computing? Maybe you’ve settled for another cloud computing solution for its lower price point. But now, you won’t have to. With Microsoft’s new Azure pricing update, many of its most popular VMs are available for a huge discount.

How Is Azure Pricing Changing?

To help make computing more available and affordable to companies of all sizes, Microsoft released new Azure pricing updates effective Oct. 1, 2016 and has revised the Azure website to reflect the simpler pricing model. Did you know you could save up to 40% on your Azure pricing? Contact Agile IT here to learn more. The new pricing breakdowns make it easier to identify the right VM categories for your use case and more precisely calculate their prices.

Simply select your OS/software, region and currency, and drill down into a variety of virtual machine sizes to discover their cost per hour or month. Virtual machines are billed on a per-minute basis, and most include load-balancing and auto-scaling for free.

Frequently Asking Questions About the Azure Pricing Update

As a Microsoft Azure partner, we wanted to pass along information behind the Azure pricing update to help you make the best cloud computing decision for your organization. Here are some common questions you may have regarding the pricing shift:

Q: Why is Microsoft making this change? A:

This change is intended to help streamline and simplify Azure pricing for customers and create predictable pricing for long-term cloud workloads. Ultimately, the price drop aligns with Microsoft’s aim to help organizations experience the cloud value and create savings for customers.

Q: What exactly is changing within Azure pricing? A:

Microsoft has made two main updates to Microsoft Azure pricing. Azure pricing for EA, MPSA will change to align with Azure.com pricing. With this change, program-specific pricing discounts (EA Waterfall, MPSA discount, SCE discount) will go away. Microsoft is focusing on new lead offers that provide opportunities for significantly higher savings to customers. The updates also include lower prices for several Azure technologies, including:

• General Purpose Instances: Prices of Dv2 series VMs will be reduced by up to 15%. Dv2 VMs are Microsoft’s general purpose tier, which offers more memory and local SSD storage than A series. Microsoft is also lowering prices of its A1 and A2 Basic VMs by up to 50%.
• Compute Optimized Instances: Prices of F series VMS will be reduced up to 11%. F series VMs provide an even higher CPU-to-memory ratio with a lower price than the Dv2 series.
• A Series Virtual Machines: In November 2016, Microsoft will introduce new A series virtual machines (Av2), its entry-level compute tier,for up to 36% lower than the A series Standard VM prices available today.
• Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit
• : Customers using Windows Server with Software Assurance can run Windows Server workloads at 41% lower cost. Microsoft is also offering a set of images that make it even easier to deploy Windows Server VMs this way.

Save up to 40% on your Azure migration by using your existing Windows Server licenses. 

Contact Agile IT here to learn more.

Q: When will these changes take effect?

A: These changes will take effect on Oct 1, 2016. 

Q: Will Microsoft make similar price changes to its other products and services?

A: This price change is specific to Microsoft Azure. Microsoft does not have any further price changes to announce at this time.

2017 Azure Pricing Reductions

Effective February 2017, Microsoft also reduced prices on compute-optimized instances of F Series and A1 Basic by up to 24% and 61%, respectively. In the coming months, Microsoft will announce price reductions for D-series General-purpose instances.

In 2017, blob storage prices have also lowered. Microsoft cut prices on the Azure Storage offerings, Hot Block Blob Storage and Cool Block Blob Storage, by up to 31% and 38%, respectively. Only customers using Azure Blob Storage accounts can enjoy these savings. If you’re on the General Purpose Blob Storage, you can take advantage of these price reductions by moving data from General Purpose Blob to Azure Blob Storage account.

With these new Azure pricing updates, moving to the cloud has become a more affordable and realistic endeavor for companies of all sizes. Azure equips you to provision servers faster, reduce costly hardware and maintenance, test your failover plan, improve disaster recovery, increase uptime and more.

Are you ready to move more workloads to Azure? Reach out to Agile IT today.

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can help your organization extract the most value possible from Azure.