Microsoft to provide customers with more cloud storage
Microsoft made a couple of somewhat under-the-radar storage announcements this past week.
At the Mix 10 conference, during one of the sessions, the SQL Azure team announced that existing SQL Azure customers will be given access to the SQL Azure 50 GB preview on a request basis. Microsoft isn't yet sharing availability or pricing details for the 50 GB option, but a spokesperson said they'd share those details "in the coming months" as part of the next SQL Azure service update. (Thanks to OakLeaf Systems' blogger Roger Jennings for the heads up on this one.)
On the cloud-hosted Exchange front, Microsoft also announced this week that it has increased the size of Exchange Online default mailboxes from 5 GB to 25 GB.
"This 5x increase is free of charge and automatically implemented on new users.You can increase existing users to 25GB if you need as your overall allocation for mailboxes has been increased to (25GB x number of users) instead of (5GB x number of users)," explained company officials in a blog posting this week. (I found that posting via Ars Technica.)