Microsoft Corp. last week unveiled a new version of Azure Stack called Technical Preview 3. The new preview of its forthcoming Azure on-premises stack comes with a bunch of new updates, the promise of continuous updates and hints of the company’s pricing scheme for the service.

In a blog post, Microsoft said that this will be the last preview of Azure Stack, though it will continue to add new features before and after general availability that’s slated for the middle of the year. Some of that new functionality will include Azure Functions, Blockchain, Cloud Foundry and Mesos templates, the company said.

“After GA, we will continuously deliver additional capabilities through frequent updates,” Jeffrey Snover, technical fellow in the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group, wrote in a blog post. “The first round of updates after GA are focused on two areas: 1) enhanced application modernization scenarios and 2) enhanced system management and scale. These updates will continue to expand customer choice of IaaS and PaaS technologies when developing applications, as well as improve manageability and grow the footprint of Azure Stack to accommodate growing portfolios of applications.”

With regard to pricing, Microsoft notes that four companies have so far committed to offering Azure Stack hardware, including Dell Technologies Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., Lenovo Group Ltd. and most recently, Cisco Systems Inc. Those companies will offer “a flexible range of options”, including a pay-as-you-go plan, Microsoft said. In addition, the company added that services running on Azure Stack will also be pay-as-you-go just like with the regular Azure Cloud, “with the same invoices and subscriptions”.

“Services will be typically metered on the same units as Azure, but prices will be lower, since customers operate their own hardware and facilities,” Snover explained.

Microsoft will also offer core-based pricing for when customers “are unable to have their metering information sent to Azure,” suggesting interest in Azure Stack from companies that don’t want their hardware connected to the Azure Cloud in any way.

New features with Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 include that offline mode, as well as D-Series virtual machines sporting 112GB of RAM and 800GB solid-state drives capable of running up to 16 virtual cores. Microsoft has also added the Azure Marketplace to the stack, so companies can grab software from the Azure Cloud and run it in their own data centers.

In addition, Microsoft said it plans to rename its Proof of Concept deployment to the “Microsoft Azure Stack Development Kit.” This is a single server dev/text tool that allows customers to prototype and validate their hybrid applications. It’s said to be a key piece of the continuous innovation model Microsoft is pursuing with Azure Stack, paving the way for updates to be distributed as early as possible to customers.

Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 is available to download here.

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