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Announcing the Commercial availability of Windows Azure Platform
As part of the commercial launch of the Windows AzureTM platform, Microsoft has announced that all existing CTP users should upgrade their accounts (Windows Azure, SQL Azure and/or Windows Azure platform AppFabric) to a commercial subscription.

All those who upgrade their existing accounts from CTP to commercial subscription in the month of January will not be charged* for any usage incurred during the month of January. During this period, you will be able to identify and have a visibility into the usage patterns to understand and plan for your future usage capacity and commitments. In addition, there will be no usage charges for the Windows Azure platform AppFabric service until April, 2010.*

Billing location
• Austria • France • Italy • Norway • Sweden • Belgium
• Germany • Japan • Portugal • Switzerland • Canada • Ireland
• Netherlands • Singapore • UK • Denmark • India • New Zealand
• Spain • United States • Finland

* More billing locations will be made available soon

Timelines
January 31st 2010: Last date to upgrade your CTP accounts to a commercial subscription. If you elect not the upgrade, effective 01st of February 2010, all existing CTP accounts will be disabled and any existing Windows Azure storage will be made read-only. SQL Azure CTP accounts will be able to keep using their database but will not be able to create new databases.

February 1st 2010: The SLA will come into effect in conjunction with the actual billing and plan selected.

March 1st 2010: All SQL Azure CTP accounts that have not been upgraded will be deleted.
April 1st 2010: Existing Windows Azure Storage CTP accounts and Windows Azure platform AppFabric namespaces that have not been upgraded will be deleted.

Important Information
You will have to export your data (if any) from the Azure platform, if you do not plan to upgrade your CTP accounts to a production subscription before the dates given above.
To be able to upgrade your current CTP accounts you will have to visit the offer page and select the offer that suits you the best. You can click here to see the offer comparison table.
When purchasing commercial subscription offers for the Windows Azure platform, make sure you are signed in with the same Windows Live ID that is associated with your CTP account(s). Your CTP account(s) will automatically get associated with the first offer you purchase by being signed in with that Windows Live ID.

Note: If you have two or more Windows Azure projects associated with your Windows Azure CTP account, only the project with the name “PDC08 CTP” will migrate to your paid subscription. The other project will not transfer. For those of you who have such an account, you will have until the 31st of January 2010 to retrieve your data before this second project is disabled.

In case you plan to purchase a new commercial subscription and NOT upgrade your existing CTP project, the please use a different Windows Live ID than the one which is associated with your CTP project, or remove all the applications, services and data associated with your CTP accounts prior to Signup.

Related info

The “Dallas” project that was announced during PDC 09 in November is still in its early preview stages and the service that will enable developers to consume public and private data for SQL Azure, SQL Server and Microsoft Office among other applications, is part of the Windows Azure platform and will offer developers access to free data as well as content for purchase. As of this date, Dallas will not be affected by the commercial release of Windows Azure and the CTP accounts for this service will remain active for some more time.

Pricing changes
Based on feedback received Microsoft has also changed the pricing for Service Bus and Access control “messaging operations as follows:
Service Bus will now be available for $3.99 per connection per month
Access Control will be charged at $1.99 per 100,000 transactions (Windows Azure AppFabric team blog)

For more information on these please visit: The Windows Azure Official page

*Taxes, if any, which may be incurred in the process of receiving services that are provided at no charge, are the sole responsibility of the recipient and as per the laws of the land where such services will be provided.
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