Microsoft offers free inbound data on Azure

Microsoft has promised free inbound data from July 1 for its Azure cloud service.

The move was designed to attract applications with substantial inbound traffic, and perhaps more importantly, “customers interested in migrating large quantities of existing data to the cloud,” it announced on its blog Wednesday.  

All inbound data transfers for both peak and off-peak times will be free under the new pricing arrangement.

Previously Microsoft had charged as much as 35 cents per gigabyte per month for its Asia Pacific customers.

According to its existing calculator, it would charge Australian "pay as you go" customers $2.20 a month for inbound transfers of 2 GB of data and double for outbound.   

Rival cloud provider Amazon, which ended its free inbound data transfer offer last year, now charges 10 cents a GB for inbound data. 

“Eliminating the cost of inbound data transfer made the project easier to estimate and removes a barrier or uploading as much data as we think we may need,” Press Association Chief Technology Officer Andrew Dowsett in a supporting comment to Microsoft’s announcement.