Windows Azure Pricing Real World

The Windows Azure Platform Pricing Calculator is pretty neat to help application developers get a rough initial estimate of their Windows Azure usage costs. But where to start? What sort of numbers do you plug in? We've taken a crack at some use cases so you can get a basic idea. We've put the Windows Azure Calculator Category Definitions at the bottom of the post.

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1. e-commerce application
1. An application developer is going to customize an existing Microsoft .NET e-commerce application for a national chain, US-based florist. The application needs to be available all the time, even during usage spikes, scale for peak periods such as Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day
2. You can use the Azure pricing data to figure out what elements of your application are likely to cost the most, and then examine optimization and different architecture options to reduce costs. For example, storing data in binary large object (BLOB) storage will increase the number of storage transactions. You could decrease transaction volume by storing more data in the SQL Azure database and save a bit on the transaction costs. Also, you could reduce the number of compute instances from two to one for the worker role if it’s not involved in anything user-interactive—it can be offline for a couple minutes during an instance reboot without a negative impact on the e-commerce application. Doing this would save $90.00 per month in compute instances (three instead of four instances in use).

2. Asset Tracking Application
1. A building management company needs to track asset utilization in its properties worldwide. Assets include equipment related to building upkeep, such as electrical equipment, water heaters, furnaces, and air conditioners. The company needs to maintain data about the assets and other aspects of building maintenance and have all necessary data available for quick and effective analysis.
2. Hosting applications like this asset tracking system on Windows Azure can make a lot of sense financially and as a strategic move. For about $6,500.00 in the first year, this building management company can improve the global accessibility, reliability, and availability of their asset tracking system. They gain access to a scalable cloud application platform with no capital expenses and no infrastructure management costs, and they avoid the internal cost of configuring and managing an intricate relational database. Even the pay-as-you-go annual cost of about $9,000.00 is a bargain, given these benefits.

3. Sales Training Application
1. A worldwide technology corporation wants to streamline its training process by distributing existing rich-media training materials worldwide over the Internet.
2. Hosting applications like this sales training system on Windows Azure can make a lot of sense financially and as a strategic move. Using the high estimate, for a little less than $10,000.00 a year, this technology company can avoid the cost of managing and maintaining its own CDN while taking advantage of a scalable cloud application platform with no capital expenses and no infrastructure management.

1. Social Media Application
1. A national restaurant chain has decided to use social media to connect directly with its customers. They hire an application developer that specializes in social media to develop a web application for a short-term marketing campaign. The campaign’s goal is to generate 500,000 new fans on a popular social media site.
2. Choosing to host applications on Windows Azure can make financial sense for short-term marketing campaigns that use social media applications because you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars buying hardware that will sit idle after the campaign ends. It also gives you the ability to rapidly scale the application in or out, up or down depending on demand. As a long-term strategic decision, using Azure lets you architect applications that are easy to repurpose for future marketing campaigns.

Windows Azure Calculator Category Definitions