Microsoft lowers Azure SQL Database prices and offers new standard plan

Microsoft has announced the latest in price cuts for its Azure service. With these new cuts customers, who use the standard and premium tiers will be able to see 50% savings. There will also be a new standard tier, S0. This new tier will allow customers to test some of the features of the standard tier at a lower price point. In addition to these changes, Microsoft is also increasing their Service-Level-Agreement from 99.90% to 99.99% availability.

Microsoft has been continually improving and upgrading Azure to stay competitive in the cloud industry. Azure has seen increases in speed, storage, and decreases in price. This highlights the strengths of using a cloud service over an on-premise solution. Companies using Azure can be sure their applications are running on advanced and secure data centers.

The major concern of cloud services is up-time. What do IT professionals do when their cloud services go down and all of their customers blame them? Well with this latest round of improvements to Azure, Microsoft has increased the SLA from 99.90% to 99.99% availability. That means Microsoft expects Azure to only have downtime of less than an hour a year.

Microsoft has detailed the plans on their website for further review, hit the VIA link to check them out. The new lower prices is a welcome change. It is also nice to see Microsoft staying competitive in the cloud space. Users can expect to see the new plan in September, and lower prices in November.

Do you think Microsoft is doing a good job of being competitive in the cloud space? Where does Microsoft still need to do some work on their Azure platform? Let us know in the comments below!