Microsoft Is Dropping Ingress Charges for Windows Azure

Microsoft, in a posting on the Windows Azure team blog, announced a change in pricing for the Windows Azure platform that will allow all inbound data transfers for both peak and off-peak time to be free. The pricing change, which is a clear bid to increase adoption of the platform-as-a-service offering, will go into effect July 1. Microsoft is selling the move as an avenue to provide significant cost savings to its customers.

Press Association Chief Technology Officer Andrew Dowsett believes the change in pricing will benefit his business, explaining:

Estimating the amount of data we will upload every month is a challenge for us due to the sheer volume of data we generate, the fluctuations of volume month on month and the fact that it grows over time. Eliminating the cost of inbound data transfer made the project easier to estimate and removes a barrier or uploading as much data as we think we may need.

Microsoft will continue to charge for outbound data transfers.