Microsoft is gradually and consistently developing its Windows Azure cloud platform, making it different from competitors’ offerings. Microsoft has announced a set of new and enhanced tools for application development and testing on Windows Azure, signaling to developers that Windows Azure is an ideal platform.

Last week, Microsoft shipped some fantastic enhancements to Windows Azure including Dev/Test in the Cloud, BizTalk Services, per-minute billing and no charge for stopped VMs, SSL support with Web Sites, and Active Directory integration.

Dev/Test in the Cloud

The new Windows Azure Free Trial now offers developers a credit of $200 per month to be applied to any service of their choice. So if developers want to use Azure for development and testing, then the new discount scheme it a great environment for dev/test.

Per-minute billing plan

In a pair of blog posts, Microsoft Vice President Scott Guthrie announced that Windows Azure is available now as a per-minute billing plan. Per-minute billing plan also exist on Google Compute Engine, but it requires a ten minute minimum. Microsoft has no such restriction exists for Windows Azure.

“Prior to today, our pricing model for compute resources on Windows Azure billed at the per-hour granularity.  This meant if you ran a VM for 6 minutes in an hour and then turned it off, we would still charge you for a full hour of usage.  Now, with today’s update, we are billing at a per-minute granularity.  So if you run a VM (or Cloud Service, or Web Site, or Mobile Service) for only 6 minutes in an hour, we now only charge you for the actual 6 minutes of compute usage (we pro-rate the hourly price – so the billed price is num_minutes * (hr rate)/60),” Guthrie said in the blog post.

No charge for stopped VMs

Microsoft will preserve the deployment state and configuration of stopped VMs and restart them to original state when users want to use them again. What else, Microsoft will no longer charge compute time for “stopped” virtual machines. Microsoft has an advantage here as compared to Amazon as Amazon EC2 has a billing mechanism where users need to completely terminate the VMs in order to stop billing.

“Prior to today, when you stopped a VM on Windows Azure we kept a reserved deployment spot for it inside one of our compute clusters, and continued to bill you for the VM compute unless you explicitly deleted the deployment.  Now, with today’s update, when you stop a VM we no longer charge you any compute time for it while it is stopped – yet we still preserve the deployment state and configuration.  This makes it incredibly easy to stop VMs when you aren’t actively using them to avoid billing charges, and then restart them when you want to use them again,” posted Guthrie.

Multi-factor authentication

The director of Windows Azure, Sarah Fender, announced in a blog post a new service code named Active Authentication, would bring strong multi-factor authentication to its cloud platform.

Companies can enable multi-factor authentication for Windows Azure. Active Directory identities to help secure access to Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, Dynamics CRM Online and many other apps that are integrated with Windows Azure AD.

“Active Authentication works by adding an extra step to the sign in process. After a user enters their username and password, they are required to also authenticate with the Active Authentication app on their mobile device or via an automated phone call or text message.  This helps prevent unauthorized access to data and applications in the cloud – reducing the risk of a breach and enabling regulatory compliance,” Fender added in the post.

MSDN–now on Windows Azure

Microsoft now provides a wealth of new opportunities through the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) in the Azure cloud service. If you become a subscriber to MSDN, you get a so-called right to use SharePoint, SQL Server, Windows Server or BizTalk development and testing without payment of licenses. Until now, these rights are not allowed to use the appropriate license in the host environment.

The Redmond company now changes MSDN use-rights so that you can now use your MSDN dev/test software licenses on Windows Azure. MSDN subscribers can now use any Windows Azure server template for a cost of $0.06 per hour.

Windows Azure BizTalk Services

In addition to developing and testing a new service, Microsoft offers Windows Azure BizTalk Services. Microsoft has released BizTalk Server 2013 – a platform as a service that provides Business-to-Business (B2B) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) capabilities for cloud and hybrid integration solutions.

The BizTalk service has built-in support for integrating with on-premises SAP, SQL Server, Oracle and Siebel systems.

DevOps ANGLE

Many developers are keen to discover how the cloud services would work for them as a Dev/Test environment with more granular billing and with more resources. Microsoft made sure that the cloud has really become an ideal platform for development and testing. Thanks to its flexibility, developers can quickly build up resources as needed, and release them when no longer needed.

However, Microsoft doesn’t want to be just a supplier of basic solutions for computing, storage, and creation of virtual machines: Going forward, the company will be doing more with every new release of Windows Azure by including the unique features that increase their usefulness to customers giving it such a valuable quality, which today no other products (Amazon AWS or Google Compute Engine) can provide.