During the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft Corp., announced the business and partner model for the company’s Windows Azure platform.

“What’s unique about the Windows Azure platform is that Microsoft manages the complexity, which allows partners to focus on what matters most for their business – building innovative services solutions and driving new revenue. This can drive down total cost of ownership by up to 60%for certain workloads during a three-year period,” said Bob Muglia, president of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft.

Windows Azure platform includes a cloud services operating system, a Web-based relational database in Microsoft SQL Azure, and connectivity and interoperability with .NET Services. The Windows Azure platform delivers a rich development experience, automated service management and pay-as-you-go pricing — all backed by service-level agreements and support.

As noted in Muglia’s keynote speech, Microsoft will offer Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model, allowing partners and customers to pay only for the services that they consume. Microsoft partners also will benefit from special promotional offers and discounts that will help enable partners to bring solutions to market faster, reduce IT complexity, and increase revenue opportunities.

To support partners’ and customers’ complex business needs, Microsoft introduced a comprehensive, easy-to-understand, enterprise-class guarantee backed by a service-level agreement that covers service uptime, connectivity, and data availability for Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and .NET Services.

Microsoft also announced pricing for the consumption-based model, offering partners and customers a clear and simple pricing structure that uses a few meters to track overall usage and allows for predictable payments without sacrificing flexibility and control. Partners and customers can leverage this type of pay-as-you-go pricing to optimize cloud elasticity and reduce barriers to entry.

As part of the Microsoft Partner Network, partners receive an additional 5 percent promotional discount on Windows Azure compute, SQL Azure and .NET Services. As an added benefit of MSDN Premium, Microsoft also announced that it will provide subscribers with resources to develop and test their cloud-based applications. Microsoft will also provide the development accelerator promotional offer for partners and customers who want to quickly develop and deploy applications with dynamic scaling, predictable pricing, and a deep discount.

Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services will be commercially available at the Professional Developers Conference 2009. Microsoft encourages partners and customers to start building on the community technology preview (CTP) at no cost today.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Azure