Enterprise customers choose Azure because of the unique value it provides as a productive, hybrid, intelligent and trusted cloud. Today I’m excited to announce four new management and cost savings capabilities. Azure Policy, now in public preview, provides control and governance at scale for your Azure resources. Azure Cost Management is rolling out the support for Azure Virtual Machine Reserved Instances management later this week to help you maximize savings over time.. To continue our commitment to making Azure cost-effective, we are reducing the prices of up to 4% on our Dv3 Series in several regions in the coming days, and making our lowest priced Storage tier Azure Archive Storage generally available today.
Simple ways to ensure a secure and well-managed cloud infrastructure
Azure is committed to providing a secure cloud foundation, while making available a comprehensive set of services to ensure that your cloud resources are secure and well-managed. Cloud security and management is a joint responsibility between Microsoft and the customer. We recommend that customers follow secure and well-managed cloud best practices for every production virtual machine. To help you achieve this goal, Azure has built-in services that can be configured quickly, are always up to date and are tightly integrated into the Azure experience. Take advantage of Azure Security Center for security management and threat protection, back up data to protect against ransomware and human errors with Azure Backup, and keep your applications running with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics. Check out the new poster that describes the Azure security and operations management services.
Enterprise customers have asked for better ways to help them manage and secure cloud resources at scale to accelerate cloud adoption. Azure Policy allows you to turn on built-in policies or build your own custom policies to enable company-wide governance. For example, you can set your security policy for your production subscription once and apply that policies to multiple subscriptions. I am happy to announce that Azure Policy is now in public preview.
Most value for every cloud dollar spent
With Azure Cost Management, Azure is the only platform that offers an end-to-end cloud cost management and optimization solution to help customers make the most of cloud investment across multiple clouds. Cost Management is free to all customers to manage their Azure spend. We are continuing to invest in bringing new capabilities to Cost Management. I am excited to announce that Cost Management supports Azure Reserved Virtual Machine Instances management starting December 15th.
In Azure, we have a long standing promise of making our prices comparable with AWS on commodity services such as compute, storage, and bandwidth. In keeping with this commitment, we are happy to announce price reductions of up to 4% on our latest general-purpose virtual machines, Dv3 Series in US West 2, US East and Europe North. These prices will take effect on January 5th.
We often hear customers are looking to the cloud for cost-effective ways to manage and store their infrequently accessed data for use cases like backup and archiving. Today, we’re announcing general availability of Azure Archive Storage, our lowest priced Storage tier yet. You can learn more details here.
Azure is the most cost-effective cloud for Windows Server workloads. If you are a Windows Server customer with Software Assurance, you can combine Azure Reserved Instances (RIs) with Azure Hybrid Benefits and save up to 82% compared to pay-as-you-go prices, and up to 67% compared to AWS RIs for Windows VMs. In addition, with Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server, customers with Software Assurance will be able to save even more.
There are many other ways to save money with Azure. To learn more, check out the new Azure Cost Savings infographic below.
Azure provides the broadest set of security and management capabilities built into a public cloud platform. With these capabilities, customers can more easily secure and manage hybrid infrastructure resources while achieving significant cost savings. Activate Security Center, Backup, Log Analytics and Cost Management today to ensure a secure and well-managed cloud infrastructure with optimized efficiency.
