JANUARY
Microsoft cuts Azure storage pricing, going after Amazon
Microsoft, not content with battling Google in cloud productivity software, is now officially hell-bent on knocking Amazon Web Services off its perch in the cloud infrastructure-as-a-service market. Starting March 13, Microsoft will be cutting pricing for Windows Azure Block Blobs Storage and Disks/Page Blobs Storage by up to 20 percent, matching what AWS charges its East Region customers for its S3 and Elastic Block Store services, Steven Martin, Microsoft's general manager for Windows Azure, said in a blog post Friday.
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FEBRUARY
Microsoft: Gates steps back in as Satya Nadella named CEO
Microsoft named 22-year company veteran Satya Nadella as its next chief executive officer on Tuesday and said co-founder Bill Gates would step down as chairman and advise the new CEO on technology, marking an epochal change of control at the company that drove the PC revolution. Nadella, a 46-year-old born in India who led the creation of Microsoft's cloud services, is only Microsoft's third CEO in 39 years, taking over from Steve Ballmer, who inherited the job from Gates in 2000.
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MARCH
Microsoft drops the "Windows" from Azure
Microsoft is to rename its cloud service, with a monumental switch from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure. The company said the rebranding would come into effect on 3 April amid its attempts to compete with major cloud providers such as Amazon and Google.
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APRIL
Microsoft earns key stamp of approval for Azure
European data protection authorities have given Microsoft's cloud services their stamp of approval, a move that could help the software giant regain the trust of international customers who've been spooked by National Security Agency spying allegations. The European Union has determined that Microsoft's enterprise cloud contracts for Azure, Office 365, Dynamics CRM and Windows Intune meet the "high standards of EU privacy law," Brad Smith, general counsel and executive vice president of Legal and Corporate Affairs at Microsoft, said in a blog post Thursday.
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MAY
Microsoft Azure plays enterprise catch up
Microsoft announced a number of enterprise features for its Azure cloud service at its TechEd conference today that edge the company closer to those offered by industry leader Amazon Web Services. In most cases, the services Microsoft announced at TechEd US are at least 12-18 months behind its main rival.
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JUNE
Newlease scores Microsoft world-first
Australian distributor Newlease is the first Microsoft "Cloud LSP" in the world, with Microsoft picking the partner to pilot the success of cloud providers in one of its major partner programs. Newlease is the first pure-play cloud distributor in the world to enter Microsoft's Licensing Solution Provider (LSP) program. This means that Newlease will now be able to sell Enterprise Agreements in addition to the SPLA licenses it already supplies.
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JULY
Microsoft cuts fees and restructures partner programs
Microsoft has revealed new cloud competencies and cut program fees at World Partner Conference (WPC) – and the updates could be just the tip of the iceberg for larger changes across its partner programs. In her keynote on the opening day of WPC in Washington DC, Gavriella Schuster, general manager of worldwide partner programs, outlined a raft of changes to the Microsoft Partner Network (MPN), including waiving fees for its three new cloud badges, and a wholesale fee cut of up to 10 percent across all its on-premise competencies.
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AUGUST
Microsoft Azure suffers global outage
Microsoft Azure globally suffered a "full service interruption" for many of its services this morning Australian time, according to a report by ZDNet US and confirmed by Microsoft. At around 4am EST, users internationally started reporting problems with virtual machines, cloud services and websites, with Microsoft acknowledging the "partial service interruption".
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SEPTEMBER
Azure Australia is up and running
Microsoft Australia managing director Pip Marlow has revealed that Azure is now operational in this country and "a number of customers and partners" are already using it. Marlow confirmed yesterday at the Microsoft Australian Partner Conference that "Australian Azure Geo" was live. It is currently in "private preview", with general release sometime before Christmas. Read more:
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OCTOBER
Azure Australia opens to public with Telstra as new partner
Microsoft has today publicly launched Azure Australia and the local expansion of ExpressRoute at the Sydney edition of its TechEd Australia conference. "Today is a historic day for us," said Microsoft managing director for Australia, Pip Marlow, at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. "Today customers can logon to Azure and choose Australian Geo for the first time."
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NOVEMBER
Microsoft explains latest Azure outage
The Microsoft Azure cloud outage that affected customers around the world this week was caused by a glitch in a performance update to its cloud storage service, the software giant said Thursday. While Microsoft had extensively tested the update for several weeks before applying it, an issue surfaced after the update was applied to the Azure Storage service, Jason Zander, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Azure team, said in a blog post.
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DECEMBER
Microsoft and Accenture unite to launch hybrid cloud
Microsoft and Accenture have had a long and productive alliance. This week, the two companies revealed another partnership that developed and will deliver to the enterprise market a hybrid cloud designed for businesses seeking greater performance and agility from their IT infrastructure. The Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, as the new product is called, was jointly funded and developed by the two partners — the world's largest consulting firm and world's largest software developer.
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