Microsoft has announced price reductions in a range of Azure services purchased through their website. These reductions are effective immediately.
Two of the services experiencing these reductions are ExpressRoute NSP (1 Gbps) and BizTalk Services (standard). They went from $12 K/month to $8.7 K/month and $4.03/hour to $2.93/hour respectively. As you can see, they are significant price reductions, and you can see the full list of services getting these reductions, and the actual reduction amount, here.
Microsoft said in an official statement that they “Understand that economics are a key driver in our customers’ move to the cloud.” Microsoft started to match Amazon prices a year ago, and it seems it is still committed. ZDnet has quoted a Microsoft spokesperson claiming that, “As we committed over a year ago, Microsoft remains committed to matching AWS list prices on compute, storage and bandwidth” as the reason for the price cuts today.
As competition between Microsoft’s Azure v. Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to escalate we will undoubtedly see more price cuts from both players. With price matching, Microsoft is ensuring its services have a solid position against AWS.
Update: Microsoft clarified that, “The price drops on select Microsoft Azure services (announced on September 25) were not a direct competitive move, but were implemented to make these services even more accessible and economical for a broader range of customers.” So, I guess they weren’t reacting to one of their biggest competitors in the market-space, but looking out for their customers.
