Microsoft has announced pricing and details for its Software-As-A-Service (Saas, or ‘cloud computing’) offering Azure, marking a significant change in direction for the formerly desktop software focused company.

There plans include a pay-as-you-go consumption-based pricing model, and one that offers discounted rates for those that agree to a six-month commitment, reports CNet.

The service has been offered as a free preview since November 2008, and will be offered in full commercial form at this year’s Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in November.

At this stage all prices are in US dollars, with Microsoft New Zealand unable to confirm any differences to New Zealand pricing as we went to press.

However, if you want to pay as you go it will cost you US12c per hour for computing, US15c per gigabyte stored, US10c per 10,000 storage transactions and between US10c and US15c per gigabyte of bandwidth.

The discount rates include a "development accelerator" promotional offer which comes in two forms, with a 15% to 30% discount off consumption charges. They require a six-month commitment, with overage charges priced at the regular rates and pricing reverting to standard Azure rates after six months.

The “Core” development accelerator offer includes Windows Azure compute hours and storage, .NET Services messages, and bandwidth in the base unit, while the “Extended” development accelerator offer adds SQL Azure database.

Customers who are part of the Microsoft partner network will also receive an addtional 5% promotional discount on Windows Azure compute, SQL Azure, and .Net services.

The SQL Azure database will cost $US9.99 for the basic web edition - up to a 1GB relational database, $US99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database, with bandwidth thesame as standard Azure.

The company is offering a 99.95% guarantee on compute connectivity, a 99.9% guarantee on storage, and automated service management which automatically re-instantiates your application.