Today we’re pleased to announce a change in pricing for the Windows Azure platform that will provide significant cost savings for customers whose cloud applications experience substantial inbound traffic, and customers interested in migrating large quantities of existing data to the cloud. For billing periods that begin on or after July 1, 2011, all inbound data transfers for both peak and off-peak times will be free.

Customers and partners with whom we’ve shared this announcement are excited by this change. The Press Association, the UK’s national news agency, supplies sports editorial and data services through Press Association Sport. As the official data partner of the UK professional football leagues, Press Association Sport plans to upload large amounts of text, data and multimedia content every month into Windows Azure and serve it across the global Microsoft network. Press Association Chief Technology Officer Andrew Dowsett explains the benefit to their business this way, “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.”

Another customer, David MacLaren, president and CEO of VRX Studios, describes the pricing change as, “a significant step in making Windows Azure more affordable for companies of all sizes. Whether a company is dealing with megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes, eliminating data ingress fees will significantly reduce their research and development, testing and operational costs.”

We hope that changes such as these continue to increase the value of the Windows Azure platform for our customers.

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