Microsoft readies new enterprise cloud products

Seeking to catch up on competitors Amazon and Google in the cloud computing and storage market, Microsoft has unveiled a large suite of new products aimed at enterprise customers.

Among these are the new Windows Server 2012 R2, to be released on October 19, as well as new versions of the Visual Studio, System Centre, Windows Intune, SQL Server database and Dynamics CRM products.

Microsoft's executive vice president of cloud and enterprise Satya Nadella unveiled the new offerings yesterday, saying the enterprise move to the cloud would be a US$2 trillion market.

For Microsoft, the business is currently worth US$19 billion, according to Nadella, who cited software as a service (SaaS) solutions such as Office 365 and Yammer for business, along with consumer-oriented offerings such as the Bing search engine and Xbox Live entertainment platform.

There is also a Microsoft Government Cloud offering available through Azure, similar to the Amazon GovCloud.

Acccording to Nadella, Windows Azure was now available in 109 countries including China, with eight languages and nineteen currencies supported.

Microsoft was investing US$15 billion in building data centre infrastructure globally, Nadella said.

Direct connections to Azure at Equinix

Separately, Microsoft said it would soon offer direct connections to Azure at Equinix, which operates a Sydney facility as part of its global data centre offering.

Available in the United States in the first half of next year, Equinix will charge US$350 (A$372) a month for a cross-connect to Azure.

Australian availability and pricing has not yet been revealed by Equinix.